Home Sweet Home

The girl was curled up on the ratty, cigarette burn-marked sofa. Her name was Connie, and she was really rather pretty. Just turned eighteen, just a month away from graduating high school. She had long brown hair, curled bangs, and manicured nails. Her breasts were probably C’s, but I’d have to check her bra to be sure. The perfect cheerleader. She really was one- a cheerleader. I’ve sat in on a couple high school games and watched her.
She was sobbing into her hands, wishing for me to disappear. I could hardly blame her. She didn’t know me, and right then I must have seemed like a monster to her. I did kidnap her, after all. I pulled her into a van while she passed the woods on her way back from the mall. I waited inside the woods and she just walked right up to me when I waved to her. Not that she would suspect a woman much, but still, that was a little too trusting. She was easy to subdue. So of course she was crying. Oh yeah, I had to beat her in the face, too. She just wouldn’t shut up. That’s probably making her cry, too.
The poor thing was finally recovering from her long trip across half the country in the back of the van, out to the middle of nowhere. She slept soundly most of the way, thanks to some sedatives, and only pissed herself twice. She’d already gotten the cussing and screaming out her system. Frankly, I was surprised little miss cheerleader knew some of those phrases.
What I was doing might seem hateful, but I don’t hate her. I don’t hate her at all. Just because she’s just like one of those rich, snotty, beautiful bitches who had a perfect childhood while mine was shit, just because she got everything I never had, never even had a chance of having!.. that’s no reason I should hate her. I just have to do this to her, to make her feel it all. Make her lose everything she thought she had. No, I don’t hate her. Well, maybe just a little. But I’ll get over it.
So here we are, in her cozy new home. A trailer home, actually. Simple enough design: a living room/kitchen area, a small hallway with a bathroom, and a small bedroom with a closet. It was situated in a hilly area, with no other residences within a mile. The place was surrounded by skinny pine trees and had a nice view of a huge rock quarry across the highway. I paid the previous owner, an aging trailer whore by the name of Crystal, very well to pick up and disappear, start a new life. I even gave her a new ID. She left all of her belongings behind, as part of the bargain. That included all of her clothes and furniture, even her dirty laundry and toothbrush. The place stank of stale smoke and old beer. I wanted it just right. You just can’t fake that kind of lived-in-ness.
“Comfy?” I asked. I moved to stand in front of the sofa. “Can I get you anything? Cigarette?”
Connie cringed at the sound of my voice. She timidly looked up at me. “What do you want?” she asked, barely audible. Bruises were blooming on her cheeks and around her eye. “Let me go, please.”
“No. Let’s get that straight right off the bat. You’re not going anywhere. Well, you could leave, you could get up and walk right out that door. Want to?” I stood aside and gestured towards the door. She looked at it but didn’t move. “You could do that,” I continued, “but then what would become of your baby sister?”
Ah, that makes her eyes go wide. “Theresa? What did you do with Theresa? Where is she?”
“She’s safe. Far away and getting farther as we speak. Someone else grabbed her the same time as I got you,” I said, casually dragging on my cigarette. That was all a lie. Theresa hadn’t been kidnapped. All I really knew about her sister was that she was seventeen. But, with any luck, Connie would buy it. “How safe she stays depends on you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. If you don’t do what you’re told, if you try to fuck things up, I’ll tell my friend to start hurting her. Plain and simple. If you try to leave, or tell anyone you’re kidnapped or anything of the sort, she’ll really get hurt. And if you do escape and run away..? You’ll get little Theresa parts mailed to you regularly. It could take years before she has nothing left to cut off.”
Connie darts up off the couch. “No! No! Don’t you hurt her, no!”
“There, there,” I said, trying my best to sound soothing. “If you do what you’re supposed to, she’ll be fine. She’ll be more than fine. She’ll be great. But if you fuck up, I’ll make sure she’s told that you are the reason she’s getting hurt. That it was your choice she’s getting hurt, that you wanted it to happen. And in a way, that’s true. It’s your choice to fuck up or not, so it’s all up to you whether she’s hurt or not. Pretty straightforward.”
Her bruised face was pale with horror. “Please, no..”
“Up to you,” I said, giving her a smile. “Obedience or dead sister? Dead sister or obedience? What’ll it be?”
“Why me?”
“No particular reason.” I’m such a liar.
After a visible struggle of emotions, Connie hung her head. “I’ll do what you want, just don’t hurt her.” Ah. Lovely. The stage was set.

Later, after I had given her a little something to eat to settle her stomach, I told her that all of this should be pretty easy for her. Mostly, I told her, all she’d have to do is sit around while I waited for something. I wouldn’t tell her what it was that I was waiting for, but that it could take a long time to arrive. Until then, all she had to do was chill. Of course, I wasn’t waiting for anything at all. It was her sitting around that I wanted.
The first thing I had her do was strip off her clothes. Some cute, expensive, mall shit. Nice, but out of her league now. Also, they stank of dried piss, not that it stood out too much with all the other aromas in that nasty trailer. She hesitated, but with my threat fresh in her mind, she got naked, sobbing all the while. She did have a nice body. Young, smooth, tight, a mild tan. The only flaws were a slight pooch in her belly from too much junk food and a little, round scar on the underside of her left arm. Her crotch was a little stubbly at the edges where her bikini line was growing in. Not a bad start, but she’d get a lot better by the time I was through. I checked her bra before tossing all her clothes in the trash. A size C, I was right. I dumped a full ashtray on her clothes, just to be sure.
“Spread you lips,” I said.
“W-what?”
“Your cunt. Show it to me.”
She appeared horrified. “No!” Nodding my head, I rose and approached her. She took a faltering step back. Swiftly, I drove my fist into her perfect tummy. She cried out and doubled over, retching. I held onto her so she wouldn’t fall over until she’d recovered her breath. I straightened her up after a moment. She looked at me with fear, and I punched her again. More retching. She tried to stay curled up, but I made her stand up straight again. She was taking shaky breaths, staring into empty space, tears running down her cheeks. I’m sure she was imagining being anywhere else in the world but there. I had my arm around her waist, supporting her and keeping her from pulling away. “Want to show me now?” I asked. She nodded jerkily and sniffed. I returned to my seat.
I sat down again. I admired the two red patches with knuckle prints around her belly button. Cute. She parted her legs and spread her pussy open a little. Fresh and pink. “Wider. Pull it open.” She obeyed, biting her bottom lip. Her eyes were closed.
“Pretty nice, Connie,” I said. “Or should I call you ‘Cunnie?’ Would you like that?” She started to shake her head but stopped, afraid of doing anything that would get her hit. She was crying steadily. “Enough,” I said. “I’ll get you something to wear.”
I went through the previous occupant’s clothes. They were a little too larger for Connie, but much of it could be worn without looking too baggy. I found some old jeans with a brownish stain on one leg and a black knit halter top. For underwear, I pulled a pair of worn, cheap nylon panties from the pile of dirty clothes on the floor. The crotch was stiff with Crystal’s dried fluids, with a hint of old blood stains.
Connie looked at the panties in disgust. “Whose.. are they?”
“They’re yours.”
“I can’t wear these. Please, I can’t.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Too cheap for you?”
“No, they’re.. they’re dirty! From someone else!” she cried. She was so torn. She clearly didn’t want to be hit.
“So clean them up,” I said. “Use your mouth.”
She looked at me, disbelieving. “I.. can’t.”
“Okay, no problem,” I said, agreeably. “I’ll just keep hitting you until you can.” I began to get up.
“Nooo,” she wailed, and stuffed the nasty panties in her mouth before I could get close enough to hit her. She looked at me, wild-eyed, for a second, then gagged as the taste hit her.
I couldn’t help laughing. “Don’t like the taste of pussy? Keep going.” She did so, licking the crotch rapidly, making a face. I made her suck and chew on them, so she could savor the taste. She didn’t care for it. She stopped to gag every few seconds. Finally, I let her stop and made her put them on. She winced as the soggy, smelly crotch touched her skin.
I turned her around and stuck a nicotine patch on her shoulder blade. With a marker I drew an X over it and her skin, so I could later see if it had been messed with. “Don’t touch that,” I said.
“What is it?”
“Vitamins. Get dressed.”
When she was done I urged her to sit at the small, round table that took up half the kitchen area. There was some dried food stuck to the plastic surface and a few fat flies rose lazily into the air. Connie looked terribly uncomfortable. I opened the fridge and took a beer from the bottom shelf. The whole shelf was stocked with cheap beer of various brands. She could choose what she liked best.
“Would you like something to wash that pussy taste down?” She accepted it gratefully, quickly taking several large swallows. “Do you like beer?” I asked. She just shrugged. I smiled to myself. It didn’t matter if she did or not. The tap water out here was full of minerals and tasted like sewage. Beer was the only other thing in the house to drink, and there was plenty of it. Like it or not, she’d get used to it.
I sat down across from her and lit up a cigarette. I exhaled and blew the smoke into her face. She ducked her head. “Do you smoke?”
“No. Not really. Tried it a couple times,” she said sullenly.
“Let me guess. Made you sick?”
“Kinda.”
“Well, why not try again?” I offered my pack of Newports to her. She shook her head, so I gave her a look that said the issue wasn’t open to debate. She reluctantly took a cigarette and held like a live snake. “But they’re bad for you,” she said.
I laughed. “That’s the least of your worries right now, babe. Just think of it as giving you something to do. It’ll relax you. Besides, you can always quit later. Here.” I lit her cigarette.
The next hour I gently coaxed her into her inhaling deeply and getting her more comfortable holding a cigarette. By her third beer, she was getting loosened up, but was also starting to look a little green. I relented and let her stop for now. Plus, it was getting late, and I really had to crash. “Would you like sleep?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Fine, one last thing.” I lead her into her new bedroom. The place was a mess. I had to step over a heap of clothes to get to the bed. I stripped off my jeans and panties and got into bed. I selected a less-stained area of the sheet to sit on. “Come here.”
She slowly relented and allowed me to pull her onto the mattress. I think she knew what was coming. Without warning I slapped her hard in the face. She recoiled and looked at me, shocked. “That was for all the bitching you were about to do. So don’t say a fucking word and get down there and lick my pussy.” She closed her eyes, lips trembling, and muttered something inaudible. How she must have hated me then. I wasn’t even really in the mood for fucking, I was worn out. But I had to break her in from the start. I had to show her what her place was.
After some kind of internal argument, which ended with her shaking her head rapidly, she positioned herself between my legs. In much the same way she cleaned the panties, she shoved her face into my pussy and started licking rapidly. I felt her gagging and sobbing against my crotch. I grabbed her soft, brown hair and pulled her closer. “What are you, a dog? Sloppy. Don’t do it like that. Do it like it was the thing you wanted most in the world. I know it isn’t, but just pretend. Got it?”
She made a muffled sound, licking more slowly, but still clumsily. She wasn’t good at it, not even passable, but it was a start. I made her keep going at it for the better part of an hour. Near the end she was just lapping away mechanically. I finally had to grind my pussy hard against her mouth and nose just to get off a little, and pushed her away. She had a stunned look on her face, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just been doing. “No beer to wash that down, babe,” I said. I yanked her semi-limp body up the mattress and flopped her down onto the pillows. She didn’t move. She might have already passed out.
I took a thick chain that was fixed around one of the legs of the bed. Wrapping it tightly around her ankle, I locked it in place. I wasn’t too worried she would try to run while I was asleep, not with the threat of Theresa hanging over her head, but I couldn’t take the chance just yet. I left her alone on the stained bed, fully clothed, with her face buried in the pillows.

After I woke the next morning, sore from sleeping on that damn, lumpy sofa, I scanned the news shows on TV to see if there was any mention of my new friend. Her disappearance was hardly national news, and we were now far away from her hometown, but I wanted to make sure she didn’t accidentally see any mention of herself. It could be counterproductive.
Connie was still sound asleep in the dark. The bedroom windows had no blinds, but the old blankets hung up over the windows kept out the light pretty well. The girl had gotten herself tangled up in the sheet, exposing the mosaic of circular stains that covered most of the bare mattress. All that was visible of her was a chained ankle sticking out one end and a fluff of brown hair at the other. I watched her sleep for a few minutes, musing that she would never again be more innocent than she was just then.
I unlocked the chain and shook her awake. “Wake up, sleepyhead.” She blinked groggily at me before remembering who I was, then her face became a blank mask of poorly disguised fear and hate. There were blue-yellow bruises marking her cheek. I gave her a pair of black shorts and some fresh, soiled panties and told her to get changed. I helped her stumble over the moat of laundry and she disappeared into the tiny bathroom.
While she was cleaning herself up, I busied myself with putting brown-and-serve sausage panties into the microwave. I sorted through the contents of her little purse, keeping some items and setting the rest aside to be burned. I smiled as I heard the toilet once, twice, then three times. What a shit-hole that place was.
Once Connie emerged, she couldn’t have looked more bedraggled and forlorn. The short shorts showed off her long, youthful legs nicely, and the tube top displayed the bruises marking her belly. I wonder what she thought of herself in the bathroom mirror. She stood there sullenly, waiting to be told what to do.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
I could see her biting back several sour remarks. Finally, she said, “Sore. Weird. Kinda light-headed. This thing on my back itches.” She wriggled her shoulders where the nicotine patch was.
“Feel like something to eat?” I asked. She slowly nodded. I knew she was starving. All she’d had to eat for days, when she was awake, was just enough to keep her going. I ushered her to the table. She sagged into one of the chairs and looked at the sausage patties. “I haven’t had these in forever,” she said, quietly. “Mom doesn’t make ‘em. Too fatty.”
“I’m not your mom,” I said, sitting and picking up a magazine from the pile Crystal had left on the table. Connie took a few experimental bites, then began to wolf down her breakfast. After a few minutes, I noticed her looking around. “What?” I asked.
“Is there.. anything to drink?”
“There’s beer in the fridge. Help yourself.”
“Beer? In the morning? That’s gross,” she whined.
I looked over the top of the magazine. “My apologies, your majesty, but we seem to be out of fresh-squeezed juice and soy milk. You can get water from the faucet.” She crossed the kitchen. I heard her find a mostly-clean glass and fill it. A moment later she spit it into the sink. “Ugh! Gross, it tastes like.. like..”
“Like shit?” I offered, not looking up.
“Yes!” She seemed to be waiting for me to make a solution to her beverage problems. When none came, she opened the fridge. She stared at the mess inside for a long moment before selecting a beer. Sipping it, she made a face, and sat down to finish her food.
When she was done, I pushed the cigarette pack and lighter across the table towards her. “I don’t really-”
“I didn’t ask,” I said. She moodily took one and lit it. It amused me to watch how carefully she braced it with her fingers, holding the flame there long enough to scorch the end. Once she got it lit, she made another face at the taste of tobacco and coughed affectedly. She held it far away from her body, as if afraid of getting burned. I supposed I had been just as awkward when I’d started, but that was a long time ago. She’d be a lot more comfortable with it before long, I knew. Suddenly, she asked, “Are you going to kill me?”
“What?”
“Are you gonna, like, go all Hannibal and eat me or kill and bury me under the house or something?”
I choked on my smoke. “No,” I managed, between laughing and coughing, “I’m not going to kill you or eat you.”
She didn’t seem to think it was so funny. She smoked on in silence. She was taking shallow, infrequent drags while gazing out the dusty, tar-tinted window. The windowsill was lined with the husks of dead bugs. After a minute, she asked, “Why is there a couch in the yard?”
I laughed. I had forgotten about the wretched sofa sitting outside the trailer. Its sun-bleached, lime green vinyl was patched with duct tape, and was now blanketed with dirt and pine needles. It was there when I bought the place and I had decided to leave it there for atmosphere. “Why, do you like it? I suppose we can switch it out with the one in the living room, if you want. Just hose it off first.”
“Gross,” she said. “Why does it matter so much if I smoke?”
“It doesn’t,” I lied. “I just think it’ll make things a little easier for you. Giving you something to do, you know, and keeping you from bitching about my smoking and getting yourself hurt. I’m being nice to you, see?” She made a noise and resumed looking out the window, pushing on a bubble in the warped linoleum with her toes. Finishing the cigarette, she started to get up, glancing at me to see if I’d tell her to sit back down. Seeing me pretending to read the magazine, she rose and wandered into the living room.
“What do you want from me?” she finally asked. “Why am I here?”
“I already told you. To do what I say.”
“But.. why? Do you want a.. a lover? There’s plenty of others. I’m not gay!”
I laughed. “No, I don’t need a lover. Besides, you can’t eat pussy for shit.”
She actually seemed offended at that. “Well, then, what? Am I being held for ransom?”
“Hardly. I wouldn’t pay to get you back, if you were mine. How do you know your parents didn’t pay me to get you off their hands?”
“They did not!” She fluttered her hands in frustration. I just shrugged, and returned to the magazine. Seeing that, she shouted, “What do you want from me?”
“Right now, I want very much to punch you in the mouth. God, your voice is annoying.” I stood up. She hastily backed away, the backs of her calves bumping against the chunky, wooden coffee table. Instead of hitting her, I picked up a photograph I had taken from her purse. It was a school photo of her sister; a cute little thing, blond hair, smilingly showing off her braces. “Are we forgetting someone?”
“Oh, God, Theresa,” she wailed. I rummaged through a cluttered kitchen drawer. Apparently thinking I was getting scissors or something to destroy the photo, she cried, “No, don’t!” I pulled out a roll of tape and used a piece to stick the picture to the wall beside the front door. As a reminder.
“Do you want her to stay safe and sound and in one piece?”
“Of course!”
“Then don’t worry about why you’re here. All you have to do is stay put and do what you’re told, if you want to keep her that way.”
“I want to talk to her, to make sure she’s okay.”
“No,” I said. “There’s no phone here, you might have noticed, and even if there was, I wouldn’t let you.”
“But how will I know?”
“You’ll just have to take my word for it,” I said. Her face reddened with anger, her hands clenched into little fists. I stood in front of her. “Go ahead. Hit me. I’ll give you one free shot.” For a moment I thought she just might, the way her skinny arm muscles twitched. But then she slowly hung her head, sobbing, and her fists went slack.
I was strongly tempted to beat her, just on principle, but decided to coddle her just a bit instead. I sat her down on the sofa and gave her a fresh pack. “But I just had one,” she whined in a subdued voice.
“Then light one and hold it. And keep one lit. In fact, if you don’t appreciate my kindness and keep on bitching about it, I’ll have your sister’s tits burned with cigarettes and have her told it was your idea.”
Connie gasped. “You wouldn’t.”
“I most certainly would. Want to see if I’m bluffing? I can have pictures sent back to show you. Maybe if you fuck up enough, we can plaster the walls with pictures of her fucked up body.”
She quickly lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. “How can you be so mean?”
“I’m not mean, I’m just dedicated,” I replied. “Here’s your drink.” I set the beer in front of her and gave her the tv remote. I returned to my magazine. She cried for a few minutes before turning on the tv and flipping through the stations. I watched her take sips of beer and an occasional drag from the cigarette just because it was there.
Some while later, while she was watching a soap opera, I saw that she didn’t have a cigarette going. I told her to come over to me. She stood in front of me, shifting nervously from foot to foot. “I noticed you weren’t smoking,” I said.
“Oh, I.. I just.. was-”
“I’m going to hit you,” I said. She shied away. I thought of punching her in the stomach again, but didn’t want her spewing a belly full of used sausage all over the place. “Get back here. Where would you like to be hit?”
“I.. wouldn’t.”
“Pick a place, or I’ll pick one. I think, your eye.”
“No! Uh.. my.. uh.. leg?”
I put my hand behind her knee to pull her close. I punched her three times in the meatiest part of her thigh. I knew it didn’t hurt too bad, but she jerked and whimpered all the same. At least she didn’t start crying again. She tried to pull away, but I kept her close. She gasped as I ran my leg up her inner thigh, feeling her skin and slightly prickly stubble. With an almost bored curiosity, I slid my fingers into her the loose leg of her shorts, feeling the heat from her crotch. She was surprisingly quiet and still as I explored the shape of her pussy beneath the crusty nylon of her panties. I looked up to find her staring vacantly into a corner of the ceiling. That made me mad. I didn’t want her blanking out while I was giving her my attention. I punched her once more in the leg to bring her back to her senses and sent her limping back to the sofa.

By the time afternoon came around, it was getting very hot and humid in the trailer. There was a fan, which I had pointed at me, leaving Connie to sweat on the sofa. She had a row of empty beer cans in front of her. She looked slightly drunk and more than a little miserable. She had a cigarette held far away from her to avoid getting the smoke in her face.
I was drinking some bottled water I retrieved from the van. She gazed longlingly at it. “Can I have some?” she asked.
“No, it’s mine. You have plenty to drink in the fridge.”
“But it’s all beer. It’s not good for you. And it’s making me dizzy,” she whined.
“You are such a little pussy, you know that? Even for a pampered bitch your age.” I mocked her in a childish voice. “I don’t wike cigawettes, and beer is for gwown -ups.”
She looked hurt. “It’s not like that! I’m just.. I just..”
“Are you scared of getting caught? Christ, you’ve been kidnapped. Take what little pleasure you can. I’m not going to get mad at you for indulging yourself. Don’t be such a baby.”
“I’m not!” Insulted, she drained the last half of a can in a few big gulps and looked at me expectantly. I shrugged. She cursed as the cigarette had burned down and singed her fingers. She stabbed it out in the ashtray and got up for another drink. “I’m not a baby,” she said, standing in the middle of the kitchen.
“No? Prove it, drink that one all at once.” I was smirking.
She hesitated a moment before opening it and chugging it down. She had to stop several times to gasp for air, but she finished it quickly. She cocked her head and looked at me. “Maybe you’re okay,” I conceded. She looked so haughty at that that I had to keep myself from laughing at her. Looking around the kitchen, she said, “I’m hungry.”
“You like pizza?” I asked. Her eyes lit up. “I’ll get one later,” I said. “Until then, there’s some stuff in the cabinets.” She poked through the shelves, which I had crammed with every fatty and calorie-drenched snack I could find. Selecting a bag of plain chips, she returned to the sofa with another beer.

Hours later, the place was even hotter, and the girl was even more drunk. Not to the point of stumbling, but it was clear her body wasn’t very accustomed to lots of alcohol. She had gotten bored with tv and was pacing around the room, looking at things. “How can you live like this?” she suddenly asked, loudly.
“Excuse me?”
“This!” She waved her cigarette in an arch. “This place. It’s so hot. It’s a mess.. stuff everywhere. This morning there were two dead roaches in the bathroom. One in the bathtub and one in the toilet. It was so gross.”
“Better than two live ones,” I said. “And it’s your place now, so if you have any bitching to do, bitch at yourself.”
“What? I don’t unders’and what you’re talking about. And why am I wearing your dirty underwear?”
I laughed. “Mine? I wouldn’t wear that crap. It’s not mine, it’s yours.”
“Stop saying that!” She threw her hands in the air and flopped back into the sofa. She started flipping the remote in the air and catching it most of the time, while sipping her way through another beer.
After she had finished watching another talk show, she moaned, “I’m so boored.”
“Oh, really? Then I’d better give you something to do,” I said. She looked nervous. I took off my pants and underwear and went to the sofa. She sank back into the armrest. “Nooo,” she whimpered. After taking the cigarette from her fingers, I arranged her so that she was lying on her back on the cushions. I straddled her face and looked down at her. She was staring alternately at my face and pussy.
“I think you’d better get nice and familiar with cunts, babe, so here’s your chance to practice.” I sat on her face, hearing a muffled squeal. She didn’t lick, and I didn’t order her to. I simply wanted her to get nice and comfortable with pussy on her face. She wiggled and grabbed onto my thighs, and finally relaxed and went limp. For an hour I sat there, smoking and watching tv. The feeling of her hot breath moving against me was rather arousing. I started masturbating myself while sitting on her nose, and that made her struggle again.
When I finally got off and let her lose, she looked stunned and confused again. Her face was red and damp. I helped her sit up and she began to arrange her hair for some reason. I gave her a freshly lit cigarette and her flat beer. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” I asked. She didn’t reply.
“That wasn’t so bad,” I repeated. “A lot better than getting beat up, hmm?”
“I guess.”
“Would you rather I just hit you instead of fucking you?”
“No.”

Connie was very subdued the rest of the evening. I suppose the experience of being my cushion made her less-inclined to whine about boredom. On the up-side, she drank with the intention of getting drunk after that. I occasionally caught her rubbing her back against the sofa. The nicotine patch was bothering her, apparently.
Moody though she was, she had perked up at the mention of pizza. I wondered if she thought I was going to have it delivered, so that perhaps the delivery person would notice something awry, even if she didn’t say anything that would get her in trouble. Well, she would be disappointed; she was by no means ready for visitors yet. The girl got unsteadily to her feet at my command. She made only a few cursory complaints as I took her into the bedroom and locked her to the bed again.
“This chain is just a precaution. It’s to help you keep you from doing something stupid that’d get you and your sister hurt.” I went to gather my things. “I’m going to be gone for a few minutes. Remember what I said. Don’t bother trying to shout for help. There’s no one close enough to hear you, and I’ll know if you do, and I’ll beat you senseless,” I said. “Not to mention what I’ll do to your sister.” Connie sat on the edge of the sagging mattress and gazed glumly at her hands.
I was a little concerned about leaving her alone so soon. But I had to get some shopping done, as well as fetch some personal things from the place I had for myself in the nearby town. I was almost positive she wouldn’t be able to free herself from the chain, and I had made sure there was nothing within her reach she could hide as a weapon. It wasn’t fool-proof, but I couldn’t watch her every second of the day. I hoped her concern for her sister would continue to be stronger than her concern for herself.

I returned to find her lying on her back, staring at the warped, waterstained ceiling panels. There seemed to be no signs escape attempts. If only I could read her mind, I thought. I knew, before long, her mind wouldn’t be much worth reading, anyway. I let her loose and sat her in front of the pizza box resting on the cluttered coffee table. I got a large one layered with every greasy topping they had. “Wow,” she said. “I never get to have stuff like this.”
“Dig in, no one’s stopping you here. It’s all for you, I already ate.”
She must have been telling the truth, judging by the way she attacked the pizza. I watched her with satisfaction. She didn’t even slow down until she was well into her third slice. While she was busy, I peeled the nicotine patch off her back. It left a sweaty, reddened square outlined with dirty adhesive. I scratched the area for her, making her arch her back with pleasure. After cleaning off a new spot, I stuck a fresh patch to her opposite shoulder blade and marked its edges like the other. Her mouth full, she mumbled something in annoyance.
I encouraged her to eat one more large slice after she was already full, telling her that it was important to keep her strength up, and made sure she lit up as soon as she was done. We watched a little tv. Eventually the alcohol and full belly took its toll and her head started nodding. “Want to sleep?” I asked.
Her head rolled around to face me. She made eye contact, but only for a split second. “Uh huh.” She smelled of beer and cigarettes. I wondered if that combination had ever been on her breath before in her life. It didn’t seem likely.
“Okay, but finish your drink first.” I gestured to her mostly-full beer can. “You opened it, so don’t be wasteful.”
“But I’m so full.”
“Wanna get hit?”
“No,” she said quietly. She slowly but steadily drained the can, taking long pauses between swallows. “I don’t feel so good.” I helped her to her feet and lead her to the bedroom. She diverted into the little bathroom on the way. I was concerned she’d had too much too soon and was going to puke, but she only had to piss. “Did you know the toilet is, like, tilted?” It seemed like a rhetorical question, so I didn’t answer. The fact that the toilet sank to the left on the uneven floor was one of the charming little things I liked about the place.
Once in the bedroom, she let me strip off her clothes without complaint. I dressed her in a baggy white t-shirt (clean, but with old, faint foodstains) and let her keep on the panties she was wearing. “You’ll feel better once you lie down,” I said. I chuckled, watching her prissily spread out the sheet to hide the mattress stains before she would get in.
As I locked her ankle, she said, “Please let me go. And my sister. I won’t tell anyone, I swear to God.” Her eyes started tearing up. “I’ll tell everyone we ran away for a few days. I’ll take the blame. I won’t tell them about this, ever. Just let us go.”
“Very touching,” I said. “Let me think about it. Hmm. No.” She turned away and hid her face the pillow.
Back in the living room, I congratulated myself on all of the empties littering the coffee table. So far so good. The ashtray was full, as well, though the filters were only very lightly stained. I knocked the cans into a garbage bag and left it sitting beside the kitchen bar/divider. Yes, so far, so good.

“My head hurts,” Connie muttered, coming out of the bathroom the following morning. She was wearing the same t-shirt and cotton lycra bike pants I had picked out. She didn’t wear a bra; Crystal’s threadbare bras were all a little too big for her. I noticed that her bruises from the other day had faded slightly. She eased herself behind the table. She considered the pack sitting on the table, hesitated, then pulled one out and lit it without my having to tell her. This made me very pleased.
“Doesn’t taste as bad this morning, does it?” I asked. “There’s still pizza leftover.”
She shook her head. “No, please, don’t make me eat. I can’t stand the thought of eating.”
“I won’t. Maybe this will help,” I said, placing a couple of ibuprofen and a large glass of orange juice on the table.
“Ojay!” she exclaimed, elated. “Where was this hiding?”
“Nowhere. I got it for you when I was out last night.”
“Thank you.” She put the pills her mouth and took a drink. Her brow furrowed. “It tastes funny. It burns!”
I laughed. “It’ll make your head stop hurting, trust me. Go on, it won’t hurt you. It’s good for you.”
“What’s in it?” she asked, suspicious.
“Spring water. Distilled in Russia,” I said. She didn’t catch the reference, but had some more anyway. She must have decided it was drinkable, for she kept taking little sips as she relocated to the sofa. It didn’t take her long to finish the glass, relishing a non-beer drink, even if it did sting.
After watching tv while I perused a paper for a while, she announced, “I think I’m drunk.” She was squinting at me, as if I was to blame.
“Are you?”
“Yes. I am.” She suddenly laughed. “Vodka! Vodka’s made in Russia. Right?”
“So it is.” I smiled. I was actually a little surprised.
At first she looked pleased with herself, then she looked sad. “Can’t I have some regular juice? Without the vodka?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said.
“Why not? Why do I have to drink it like that?”
“That’s how real people drink it,” I said.
“My parents never did,” she said, defiantly.
“Your parents are pussies.”
“Are not, don’t say that about them.” She squirmed on sofa.
“Face it, babe, they are. And so are you. But maybe you’re not as much a pussy as them. I haven’t made up my mind yet. You might be okay,” I said. She looked somewhat mollified. I got her a beer and set it in front of her. Then I punched her, half-strength, in the upper arm.
“Oowww,” she whined, flinching away. “What’d I do?”
“Nothing. I just realized I hadn’t hit you in a while. Didn’t want you to think I was getting soft.”
“I wasn’t,” she sulked, massaging her arm. The injury was soon forgotten, as she became engrossed in drag queens berating each other on a talk show.

The day passed swiftly. Connie’s alcohol-fueled appetite lead her to quickly finish off the remaining pizza. Some of it found its way onto her shirt, adding to the stains, but I approved of that. Though I had to make sure she kept a cigarette going while she was eating, which she thought was gross, I left her alone for the most part. I wanted her to get more relaxed and to feel more comfortable with her surroundings. I think sometimes she even managed to briefly forget where she was; she would laugh at something on tv, then glance worriedly at me, expecting me to be angry. I pretended I wasn’t paying attention. A few more times she begged for plain orange juice, but was denied.
During the evening, before a supper of junk food, I made her get down on her hands and knees and eat me out again. She was just as reluctant and sloppy as before. At least she had stopped gagging. This time I was more aroused, however, seeing her in her degraded state and imagining the things I could do to her.
For effect, I pushed her away, sighing and shaking my head. I acted like I was quietly disappointed in her. She looked confused, sitting back on her haunches on the dirty kitchen floor, waiting for me to do or say something. Seeing I was ignoring her, she slowly got up, her sweaty legs leaving clean spots on the linoleum, and returned to the tv. By night time, she was once again tired, buzzed, and bored out of her mind. I once again secured her to the bed to let her sleep off her day of indulgences.

The next few days she continued to get into a routine. She would get up in the morning, complain about how bad she felt, and eagerly have an orange juice containing increasing amounts of vodka. With nothing else to do, she would eat junk food, drink beer, and watch tv. She was still taking only small and infrequent drags from her cigarettes, but I wasn’t bothered by that, so long as she was getting used to them.
I knew that she was starting to have trouble sleeping. After the initial exhausting terror had worn off, the strangeness of her situation set in. That, plus the stimulation of her ever-increasing levels of nicotine, was keeping her up at night. I could hear occasionally hear her crying softly and tossing and turning on the creaking mattress throughout the night..
I think the worst thing for her was when I ordered to go through some cheerleading routines for me, under threat of violence. It was hilarious to see her, drunk and utterly humiliated, going through half-hearted chants and dances, tears running down her cheeks. It was so delicious that I just had to masturbate while I watched. She was so eager to get more drunk afterwards that I even let her have a mid-day glass of juice and vodka.
I think she was starting to calm down some overall. She realized I wasn’t going to torture her to death or go into some schizo act and stab her a few dozen times in a hallucination that she was my dead mother or something. I would hit, abuse, and humiliate her, of course, but she was well aware that things could be much worse.
For the most part, she just sank into a depression. She would spend a long time staring out the windows. Waiting for rescue, I supposed. Perhaps she imagined that any minute some handsome, rugged detective would burst through the door, put me in cuffs, and take her back home. But I knew she wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. Her loyalty to her sister held her in the trailer as securely as a locked cage.
There was a downside to her getting more at ease. She began to get more bitchy. With the fear, boredom, and booze building up, I knew it was only a matter of time before she snapped. One morning she finally attempted to take a shower. Afterwards, I could hear her in the bathroom, cursing over the sound of the hairdryer. I pushed open the door (it had no lock) to see her, red-faced with frustration, tugging a cheap brush through her tangled hair. She was sitting on the toilet with a thin, graying towel wrapped under her armpits. She was placing as little of her feet on the floor as possible, since the shower leaked and created a scummy puddle on the floor. The towel she had used as a bath mat was soaked and rumpled.
“Is there a problem?” I asked with a smile.
She glared at me. “A problem? Yeah, there’s a problem. The stupid water made my hair smell like shit, that shampoo doesn’t do shit, and this stupid, cheap hairdryer scorched my hair and is a piece of shit.”
“Sounds like a shitty day.”
She looked around, searching for something else to bitch about. “I hate being here, I hate it!” Her eyes lit on Crystal’s old toothbrush. “My teeth are dirty and my gums hurt and you expect me to brush my teeth with this?” She waved it in my face, showing me its dirty, splayed bristles. I couldn’t help but snicker at her indignity. She made an inarticulate sound of rage and threw the toothbrush at me. It bounced off my forehead and splashed into the puddle.
I was really more amused than upset, but as I watched the color drain from her face, I knew this would be a good excuse for doing something that needed to be done and let her blame it on her own bad behavior. I stepped into the bathroom and reached for her. She slid off the toilet and crouch against the shower stall. “I’m sorry,” she said in a breathless voice. “Oh, god, I’m so sorry, please don’t hit me, please, please don-”
I grabbed her towel and heaved her to her feet. “Get up. Get in there,” I hissed. I pushed her into the kitchen, her wet feet squeaking on the linoleum. She stood there, facing away with her head down, still clad in the towel. Her shoulders jerked at the harsh sound of duct tape as I pulled it off the roll. “Put your hands behind your back.”
“Oh, no, no, no, please, I’m sorry..”
“Shut up.” I pulled her arms behind her, securely binding her wrists together. She was making little whimpery noises. I sat her down on the chair, with her arms around the chair back, holding her in place. “Seems like you have a lot to complain about. Maybe I can relieve some of the burden. Hair bothering you?” She didn’t answer, only sobbed. “Huh?” I asked, poking her bare shoulder. She only sobbed louder.
“Well,” I said. “I never took any beauty classes, but I’ll see what I can do.” She tried to look around, puzzled as to why she wasn’t already beaten up and starting to bruise. I gathered her hair into a ponytail and plunged in some scissors.
She stiffened at the scrunching sound. “Noooo!” she screamed, “Not my hair, nooo!” She tried twisting her head away, but I yanked her head back in place. I mangled her long brown hair, making it even with the nape of her neck, with her nearly shrieking with hysteria all the while. I kept going until her crowning beauty was an unruly tangle, longer at the top and shorter at the bottom. It looked like a kind of ragged bowl cut. Her ears, normally hidden, stood out. When I was done, I brushed it out a little, getting rid of the loose hairs. She was making keening noises with every exhale.
I took two bleaching kits from under the sink and mixed them in a bowl. “While I’m at it,” I said, massaging the grayish paste into her dark hair. She made a few desperate protests, eventually quieting down into shock. “Hey, it’s turning orange. I wish you could see this. Let’s hope it doesn’t stay that way.” I let it set for the allotted time before rinsing it out under the sink faucet, getting wet with the knowledge I was destroying her pretty hair, stripping it lifeless.
I repeated the whole process again, with the toner, just to be sure. It took almost two hours. I was getting increasingly aroused. I fluffed her hair with the dryer she hated, not caring if it scorched her poor, abused pelt. When I was finally done brushing out the tangles, I positioned her in front of the Budweiser logo mirror hanging on the living room wall. I almost came, right then and there, seeing her eyes widen. Her formerly shiny, crowning glory was now an uneven, dull, bright yellow mop. There was no doubt that its unnatural color came out of a bottle. I stood behind her, watching her mouth work soundlessly. When the strangled scream finally came out, I orgasmed.

I let her wallow in depression for the next couple of days. She was taking her change in appearance a little rougher than I would have expected; I didn’t realize just how much of her identity was tied up in her hair. I doubt her reaction could have been much worse if I’d gone ahead and shaved her bald. She would sit despondently on the sofa, eyes swollen from crying, occasionally reaching up to touch her hair. Every time she passed a mirror, she would stop and stare for long moments. I could hardly blame her. She looked almost like an entirely different person, what with her trashy hair and sloppy, revealing clothes. I doubted even her parents would have recognized her. This is what I wanted, of course, but it almost came as a shock to me to see it happen so suddenly right before my eyes. What surprised me more was that she hadn’t complained about her impromptu hairstyling even once. All of her thoughts were directed inward.
One afternoon, as she was sitting in an old nylon slip that served as a thin dress, I decided it was time to introduce her to something new. Although she had started to show signs of her old self, I thought it might help boost her more quickly out of depression. Leaning against the counter, I said for the thousandth time, “It really doesn’t look bad. I think it’s cute.” It was a lie, of course. I did think it was kinda cute on her, but it really did look bad.
Her head tilted in my direction, “Really?” It was funny. She was so down that she was even grasping for compliments from the one who did it to her.
“Yep, why do you think I did it? Oh sure, it’s a little uneven, but it’s flattering, overall. You know, it suits you.” That at was the truth, at least. It suited the way I wanted her to be. “Well, I can’t stand seeing you mope around,” I continued. “I was thinking of doing something for you, might make you feel better. I wasn’t sure about it, though. You’re still such a baby.”
“I am not,” she replied, quietly. This was a tactic that seemed to work on her.
“So you’re willing to try it to feel better, even if it makes you feel weird at first?”
“How will it make me feel better?” she asked, looking suspicious.
“Just make things easier for you. Make things easier to handle.”
“I dunno.”
I took that for a yes. Taking a water pipe from my bag, I prepared it with pot from a plastic bag, and sat it on the coffee table. She looked at it blankly. I rolled my eyes, waiting.
“What is it?” she finally asked.
“You smoke pot with it. You can’t really be that innocent.”
“Marijuana? I knew that. I just don’t know.. if I should.”
“It’s not going to hurt you, I promise. Here, I’ll show how.” I sat next to her and held her lighter to it. She watched with curiosity, in spite of herself. I sucked in the smoke and blew it in her face. She blinked and crinkled her nose. I offered it to her. “See? It didn’t kill me.”
“I-I just don’t know..”
“I guarantee even your pussy parents have done this before, even if it was years ago. God, what am I supposed to do? Give you diapers and a pacifier? Try to do something nice for you-” I started to get up.
She reached out and pulled at my arm. “Wait, I’ll do it.” I gave her a skeptical look, then let her take the thing. She fumbled with it until I relented and lit it for her. After wiping the mouthpiece with the edge of her slip, she put her lips on it and sucked.
I warned her, “Now, you might get the urge to cou-” Her eyes went wide and she began to cough convulsively. I sighed and patted her on the back until the fit passed.
“How can you smoke this stuff? It’s not like cigarettes,” she whined.
“I told you, it’d take a little getting used to. Go on, try again. And don’t let it out until I tell you to, even if you have to cough. Just hold it in,” I told her. She coughed once more and tried again. I could see her chest heave in an attempt to cough, but she managed to keep it until I let her exhale. She let it out in a series of coughs.
“It tastes bad. I don’t feel any different,” she said.
I laughed. “No, not quite yet. Keep working on it.”
“I don’t think it’s gonna work on me.”
“Maybe not, but you’ll never know unless you keep at it.”
She worked pretty hard at it. Perhaps she was just curious how it would feel, or wanted to prove just how much it wouldn’t work on her. By the time her soaps were done and her talk shows were coming on, she was nicely toasted. She was only making little cursory coughs now. It was precious, seeing her fake blond head rolled back with her eyes closed, her slip hiked up to the tops of her thighs. She was holding the bong with her fingertips, balancing it between her knees on the edge of the sofa.
“How do you feel?”
“Oooh… okay.” A smile played at her lips.
“Think it worked on you?”
She giggled. “Nope. Not at all.” After a few moments she opened her eyes. “I’m thirsty.”
“Well, go get something. I’m not your maid.”
“But I’ll fall oooh-ver,” she protested. Nevertheless, she pulled herself up and teetered to the kitchen. I knew she was enjoying the feeling of the high by the way her movements were exaggerated. Like when she got really drunk. She flopped back onto the sofa, splashing beer onto her slip. “Oops.”
“You can do as much as you want, I have plenty to spare. You might want to wait a little while though. Too much with the beer might make you throw up.”
“I’ll just throw up on the curtains, no one’ll notice,” she said, making me laugh.
She was sweaty, red-eyed rag doll by the time I helped her to bed. This time I replaced her patch with two fresh ones instead of one. She probably would have complained if she hadn’t been so drunk and stoned. I didn’t mark them anymore, she had so far proved faithful in not tampering with them. I didn’t bother getting her to eat my pussy that night. She probably would have just giggled the whole time, anyway.

I let her adjust to the pot for a couple more days. Her appetite had increased even more. She had practically eaten everything in the place. It showed in the softening of her belly and upper thighs. There wasn’t a scale in the trailer, so I didn’t know exactly how much she’d gained, or even what she weighed to begin with. If she had taken notice, she hadn’t started bitching about it yet. She probably didn’t feel the change since she was wearing Crystal’s large clothes. At least she wasn’t complaining about her hair anymore. It had grown out enough to show a line of dark brown roots.
I prepared the things I would need for the next part of her makeover, arranging them on the kitchen table. When I was ready, I called her over and told her to sit in the armless chair. She was wearing the tube top and short shorts ensemble again. I straddled her and sat in her lap. She grunted in discomfort.
“I’m going to hurt you now,” I said.
Her bloodshot eyes got big and began to tear up. She glanced at the rings and others items on the table, not comprehending what they were for. “Why? What’d I do?”
“You didn’t do anything. In fact, you’ve been pretty good. This isn’t to punish you. It’s something we need to do. It’ll make you look sexy. You do want to look sexy, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but.. hurt?”
“It’s going to. There’s no way around it. So, do you want me to tie your wrists up, or will you be able keep still?”
“No, please don’t tie me up,” she sobbed.
“Okay, but you better not go flailing them around. You’ll fuck things up, and probably hurt yourself worse. Okay?” I scrubbed her earlobes with antiseptic while she whimpered in fear. She finally understood and immediately began hyperventilating when I picked up the forceps and thick needle.
“Oh! Oh, no, don’t do that. I don’t want it. They’re already pierced!” She reached up to try to emphasize the little hoops that dangled from her ears. I pushed her hands down.
“Don’t touch them, you’ll get things dirty again. I know they’re pierced, but not enough. Trust me, I know what’ll look good on you. And since you’ve pierced them before, you know it’s not going to hurt too bad, right?”
“But, but, but..” She continued on like that while I squeezed the forceps tight on her left earlobe. Holding onto them, I was able to keep her head from jerking around. She let out a squeal as I pushed the needle through. I followed it through with a nice-sized ring and fixed it shut. She tried to touch and I had to push her hands down again. I tightened the forceps a short space up along the lobe. “No, not another!”
“Shut up.” She made another pretty noise when the needle went through. I knew the parts were getting more sensitive the higher I went. Another ring, a blotting of blood, and another tightening of the clamp farther up. She blubbered for me to stop. This time, when the needle went up, her arms flew up, knocking my hand loose. The clamp dangled from her reddened ear. I knew the action was involuntary, but it was all the excuse I needed. “Okay,” I said, grabbing the duct tape from the table.
“No please, I don’t need it, I’m sorry, I don’t wanna be tied up,” she cried, but her arms were limp as I fixed them to the back of the chair. She looked much better like this, anyway, squirming helplessly, chest thrust out.
I kept going, heedless of her protests and wailings, until I had installed ten rings going all the way up to the top of her ear. I knew I probably shouldn’t be doing so many in one spot all at once, but it was hard to stop once I started. Her sounds were simply making me wet. Her cheeks were wet with tears, and her cries started anew when I moved on to her right ear. I pierced that one five times, then added one more for good measure. Seventeen rings dangled from her abused ears. I had to admit, they looked good. The amateur piercing class I took had paid off.
The poor thing looked at me, a bubble of snot under her nose, expecting me to let her up now. “No,” I said, “I’m not quite done yet.” I made her blow her nose in a paper towel and swabbed it with more antispetic. She made a long moan.
“Oh, stop bitching. People do this all the time and they lived.” I clamped the side of her right nostril, and pushed the needle into her nose. She flinched, but didn’t shout. A tear trickled down her cheek. I carefully snapped a stud in place. The next part was trickier. I forced her head back for a better view and fixed the forceps onto her septum. This time, when the needle went in, she did scream. I don’t know if it hurt as bad as some of the others, perhaps it was the idea of being ringed like a bull. Through this one I put in a thick ring that rested on her upper lip.
She was pretty much defeated when I did her lower lip, once, and her right eyebrow, twice. She just kept making those long, keening noises she had made when I was bleaching her hair. The areas were all red and angry. I hoped they wouldn’t get infected. I’d make her take a course of antibiotics, just in case.
“Almost done, my little pincushion,” I said, leaning close. With her new piercings and hair, she did indeed look like an entirely different person. Her thighs were slippery with sweat against my own. “Just two more.”
“W-wheere?”
I peeled down her tube top and bunched it around her waist. She turned her head away and moaned a quiet ‘nooo’ as I fondled her breasts. I pinched and plucked her pink nipples until they became erect. She took large, gasping breaths as I cleaned them and clamped the forceps onto one nipple, squeezing it flat. For this one, using a thicker needle, I took my time. I slowly pushed it into her skin, tearing into her nipple, watching her toss her head back and forth. A bright red drop of blood trickled out, disappearing under the curve of her breast. It finally popped through, mercifully for her. I put the ring through, screwing it closed. I did the second one much more swiftly. Just to be nice. After a minute of playing with her new rings, I got off of her lap.
“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” I asked while untaping her arms.
“Yes,” she moaned.
“Oh, c’mon. Are you hurting now?”
“I’m throbbing all over.”
“But are you hurting?”
She took stock of her nerve endings. “I guess not bad.”
“There, see? A little pain and it’s all over. I must admit, they look good. I told you they would make you hot.” I poured her shot of vodka, without the juice. “I think you could use this.”
She took it and swallowed it down. “Ow, that stings.” She touched the ring in her lip. “Did it leak out?”
I laughed. “No. Want to see yourself?”
I helped her up and took her to the Budweiser mirror. This might become a tradition, I thought. This time, though, she didn’t scream. “Wow,” was all she said, in a kind of horrified fascination. She looked at herself in awe, turning her head this way and that, fingertips brushing over the metal in her face. Lastly, she looked at her breasts. She cupped them, her mouth slightly ajar. She flicked at the rings, then pulled very gently at them, stiffening from the mixture of pleasure and pain. It was an entirely new sensation for her. “I look like a freak,” she said at last.
I couldn’t deny that, so I just said, “You look fucking hot, babe.” She didn’t leave the mirror for a long time.

The girl didn’t get very high that night, and even the straight vodka didn’t help her get very drunk. She did smoke a lot a harder than usual, however. Her fingers never stopped touching her new jewelry. I let her put on a baggy t-shirt so that the tube top wouldn’t irritate her nipples. I heard her sniffling a little, but I wasn’t sure if she was quietly crying, or if her nose was simply agitated from the rings. On her way to bed, she stopped to gaze for long moments at the picture of her little sister taped to the wall. Her expression was unfathomable.
Late into the night I was awaked by the sound of her crying. She was making long, wet sobs, loud even muffled by her pillow. She was crying so hard she was making herself gag. I considered going to try to comfort her, but I decided to let her cry herself out. Whatever particular thing was upsetting her that night she would have to work out for herself. Eventually, the sobs petered out and she grew quiet.

For days after that, she didn’t complain a bit. She practically threw herself with abandon into getting drunk and high. Even I was impressed. By midafternoon, she had drinked and doped herself into a stupor. She would be sprawled out on the sofa, semi-conscious, until it was time to rouse herself and gorge herself on chips and sugary things.
While she wasn’t bitching and arguing, she wasn’t giving any of her little smartass quips, either. I was somewhat puzzled by her behavior. She had good reason to be depressed, but I wasn’t sure what caused her sudden morose swing. She didn’t seem overly upset about the piercings. She was fascinated by them, if anything.
Even more to my surprise, probably due to her stir-craziness, she went through a short-lived but frantic cleaning phase. I thought she looked cute, stumbling around the kitchen half-drunk, trying to clean the surfaces with damp paper towels in one hand and a beer and cigarette in the other. After getting bored with that, she tackled the drifts of laundry. She begged me to get them all washed. I told her no, that it would be a waste of money until more items needed it, and that even most of the dirty stuff was still wearable. So she tried folding the dirty clothes and putting them away. She discovered the same difficulty that Crystal had; the storage areas simply weren’t up to the task. The closet was already overflowing and the drawers were crammed. Much of the clothing just stayed on the floor, although in somewhat tidier piles.
Pawing through one of the drawers, looking for more space, she found full pack of Camel Wides, Crystal’s brand. I had overlooked it while taking stock of the trailer. She showed it to me and asked if they were good.
“Why not try and see? You’ve been pretty good at trying new things lately,” I said.
She shrugged and lit one up. To her surprise, she liked it. “They’re good! They taste a lot different. Not as sweet. ” She took a few more drags. “It hardly feels like I’m inhaling anything at all. Easier to suck on, too.”
“If you still like them when you finish the pack, I’ll get you some more.”
“Okay.”

That evening I waited for her to come out of the bathroom for the last time of the day. “I’ve been thinking,” I said to her. “I’ve been making you do things for me. How would you like it if I made you feel good?”
“Uh.. I guess,” she said cautiously, folding her arms over her breasts.
“I can do that, you know, and I can teach how to do some things at the same time. But you have to be willing.”
“Willing?”
“Yeah, like let me do what I want, without bitching and moaning the whole time. That really ruins the mood.”
Her reddened eyes blinked owlishly. “I-I don’t know.” She suddenly looked so uncomfortable, it was funny.
“Well, how about just giving it a try. I’ll be nice. If you can’t get it into it, I’ll stop, and I won’t be mad at you or anything,” I said gently.
“What do I have to do?”
“Nothing. I’ll do everything. Come on.”
I undressed her and sat her on the dirty bed. “Just lie back.”
For a long time I used my mouth, hands, and Crystal’s old plastic vibrator to make Connie come. I made her smoke the whole time. She reacted so shyly when I started, but the load of chemicals in her system was working on her inhibitions. Not to mention that she had already become intimately familiar with my cunt. I had to avoid her tender nipples, other than passing the vibrator over her new rings, producing a clattering sound and surprised gasp from her. Most of the time, after she finally allowed herself to get into it, she kept her face turned to the side and her eyes scrunched shut. Perhaps she was trying to imagine I was someone else. No matter.
By the time I was finished, she was shuddering and dewy with sweat. She had that stunned look in her eyes again. I made her kiss me, forcing the taste of her pussy into her mouth. She squirmed loose and rolled over to face away, curling up. “No one ever did that before,” she said.
“What, went down on you?”
“No. Made me feel.. that way.”
“Well? Didn’t you enjoy it?” I asked, lighting up. She didn’t say anything. I smoked and looked at her body. Her mild tan had gone pale and little fat dimples were forming on the backs of her thighs. Curled up as she was, a baby lovehandle of fat was pushed up on her side. Even her back looked softer. There were fresh, but mostly faded, bruises scattered around her skin where I had taken out my aggressions on her. I felt rather fond of her, just then. I wanted to see more of her body. I reached to pull her over and my fingers touched her face, which was wet. She was crying again. “What the hell? Are you crying again?”
She curled up tighter.
“I spend my time making you come, and all you can do is cry about it?”
“Nooo.”
I punched her in the kidney, making her hiss in pain. I got out of the bed and yanked her ankle to the edge of the bed. After attaching the chain, I shut off the light. “Cry alone, then.”

The following day a packet I had been waiting for arrived. I inspected the contents with satisfaction. The person did good work, very worth the money. Connie looked at me from the sofa, wondering why I was chuckling. I told her to come to me. “Look,” I said, handing her an ID card.
“What is it? Who is Crystal Chambers? Why is my picture on this?”
“Because that’s you,” I said, grinning.
“But my name’s not Crystal! It says I’m twenty-two. I’m not twenty-two. What’s going on?”
“That’s your name now, Crystal,” I said. “I can hardly have you calling yourself by your old name, can I? And as far as everyone’s concerned, it’s perfectly legit.” I showed her a document, a birth certificate, stating that she had been born locally as Crystal Chambers, 22 years ago. Her mouth dropped open.
“You’re fucking kidding me. Right?”
“Nope. Crystal.” I smiled at her. I had other papers as well, filling out her identity, including a social security card, and even the deed for the trailer, for what it was worth. These I would keep to myself. She had a whole new history. Her mother had died when ‘Crystal’ was 14, leaving her on her own. Her father was unknown. She hadn’t even attended a single year of high school. I could have gotten her a driver’s license, too, but she didn’t know how to drive. Besides, she wouldn’t be driving herself around anyway. “Isn’t this cool? You’re a whole new person, just like that. This is officially your home now.”
She backed away, eyes wide as saucers. Throwing the ID to the floor, she fled into the bedroom, crying. I sighed and shook my head. She could suck the fun out of anything. I gathered up the papers and put them aside to take back to my place for safekeeping. I needed to fetch some more pot from my stash, and get some groceries as well. I had also promised her some Camel Wides, so I’d have to get a few cartons of those.
I went to check on her first. She was staring at the ceiling, dry-eyed, hugging her yellowed pillow to her chest. “It’s not that bad,” I said. “I’ve got to out for a while. I’m going to get you your Camels. You’ll like that.” She nodded distantly. I fastened the chain, got my purse and keys, and left.

“Fuck.” A few miles down the highway I realized I had left the packet with the documents on the table. I pulled onto a dirt road and turned around beneath a spray-painted sign advertising junk salvage and sorghum for sale a half mile down the road.
I got back to the trailer and mounted the cinderblock front steps. Glancing through the window I saw the girl at the kitchen counter, looking for something. It didn’t even occur to me that something was wrong with this picture until I was opening the door. At the sound of my entrance, she screamed with surprise and spun around. The scissors and a butter knife flew out of her hand and landed noisily in the sink behind her. The chain, one end still locked around her ankle and the rest draped over arm, slid off and clattered loudly to the linoleum. She was frozen, staring at me with abject horror.
I sat my purse down and walked into the kitchen. “What are you doing?”
Her eyes darted around, like a wild animal seeking escape, then slowly closed. She slid down the side of the counter onto the floor. The drawers holding the silverware (mostly plastic forks) and items like the scissors were wide open. I looked in the sink at the things she’d been scrounging for. Being the sharpest things in the trailer, I could only assume she was hunting for weapons. She was curled up, fetal-like, against the cabinet, knees tucked up and her forearms crossed over the top of her head.
“You’re loose,” I said, stating the obvious. She made that keening noise. “How’d you get loose? What were you going to do, scissor me to death?” She shook her head imperceptibly, starting to cry. I nudged her with my foot. “Well?”
In the tiniest, highest-pitched voice I had yet heard her make, she cried, “Please don’t kill me, I don’t want to die, please don’t kill me, pleee-heeaase please don’t, don’t kill me.” No wonder she was curled up on the floor. She truly believed I was going to slaughter her. I found myself more surprised than angry by her escape attempt. A couple of weeks ago I would have kicked and punched her into a leaking pulp for that. But now, she was just plain pitiful. I could have used it as a great excuse for beating her, but perhaps I could use it for something more constructive if I played my cards right.
“I’m not going to kill you,” I said.
Quivering, she looked up in wonder. Then she gasped. “No, not my sister! Don’t hurt my sister!”
“No, not your sister, either.” I reached down and patted her bleached frizz. “I forgive you.”
Once the words sank in, she shakily untangled herself, crying with relief, I suppose. She didn’t seem to know what to do. She pawed at my shoe and bumped the top of her head against my shin, trying to express some wordless gratitude. This is an interesting development, I thought.
“What the hell did you to your bed?” I asked. I had gone to see how she had gotten loose. Both locks on the chain were still in place, one on her ankle, the other on an empty loop. I had secured the chain around the leg and the metal side bar of the frame, so that she wouldn’t be able to free it simply by lifting the leg. I found mattress dipped at the end as if the frame collapsed. The right side of the frame had been unscrewed from the leg and was resting on the floor. The screws and bolts laid beside it. I turned to Crystal, who stood sobbing quietly behind me. “How’d you do that?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Fuck that. How did you get the screws out?” I took hold of her wrist to see her fingers. The pads of her thumb and forefinger were scratched and raw, and her nails looked chipped and chewed on. “Damn, girl. Why didn’t you just gnaw your foot off?”
“I-I-I..”
I sighed. “Just help me get this back together. Wait,” I said, fetching the key to unlock her ankle. I lifted the frame to align the screw holes. “I’ll hold it, you put the bolts back in. You seem to be good at that.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again. She knelt and replaced the bolts, using her uninjured hand. I sat on the edge of the bed to test it. It seemed sturdy. “So what were you going to do,” I asked her, “lie in wait and attack me with a butter knife?”
“No! No, I wouldn’t!” She looked genuinely appalled. Seeing that I expected more of an answer, she swallowed and continued, “I got loose, but.. the chain. It was dragging. I looked in the drawers. For the key. I thought.. you kept it in there. It wasn’t there so.. I was looking for something to, ya know, break the lock open. That’s when you came back.”
“And if I hadn’t?”
“I don’t know. Run into the woods. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”
“No, you weren’t.”
She started crying again. “You’re really not going to kill me?”
“No. If you’re so scared about that now, why did you risk it in the first place?”
“I don’t know. I had to.. to try. I’m sorry, but I had to. I was scared.” She was staring at the floor and wiping her cheeks. I rolled my eyes and pulled her closer. Her forehead pressed against my thigh.
“Why more scared now? Why not try the first night you were here, or the first time I went away? I’ve been easing up on you lately, or so I thought. What, were you waiting ‘til I relaxed so you could slip away?”
“No, it’s not like that, it’s like.. like..”
“Like what?” I pressed.
“Like I’m- I don’t know.. losing me. I don’t look like me. I don’t even act like me.” She sniffed hard, wringing my pants in her hands. “And it’s happening all so fast. You did all these piercings, and I thought they looked like kinda neat, but they’re not me. And you made me feel those things the other night and they felt good and.. I liked it. It’s like I’m being someone else. But this place is gross and I look gross, and.. and then you said I have a new name and I got so scared, I wasn’t thinking, I’m sorryyy.” The last came out as one prolonged sob.
Ah, so that explained why she had been acting so moody lately. I teased up the ragged ends of her sweat-dampened hair. “And you panicked?”
She nodded against my thigh.
“And you felt maybe a little guilty? For enjoying things you thought you shouldn’t?”
A long pause, then another nod. I laughed, but gently. She looked up, thinking perhaps I was about to do something mean. Her tears had made wet circles on my leg. “You don’t have to feel guilty,” I said. “And you don’t have to worry about becoming someone else. You’re just becoming more like the real you, free of constraints. Don’t you see? You’re only becoming the way you were meant to be. It’s okay to enjoy these things. I know you better than you know yourself, believe me.” She looked bewildered. “Go get my cigarettes. They’re in my purse. I need a smoke.”
“Me too,” she said, subdued.
She fetched them and I lit two, giving her one. We smoked in silence. “I still need to go out,” I said when she was finished. I looked at the chain. “Need to arrange something else. I certainly can’t lock you up the way you were.”
“I won’t do it again, I swear.”
“Be quiet. Just because I’m not going to kill you doesn’t mean I’m not pissed at you. Lie back.” I fixed the chain around the bars that made up a simple headboard. To get that loose she would have to unscrew the whole top of the frame, and would have to carry the entire headboard around with her if she did. “I should’ve done this the first time. You know, what I should do is lock this chain around that nose ring of yours. That’d work.”
She covered her nose. “Oh no! Don’t, please?”
“You’d probably just get drunk and roll out of bed and rip it out of your face, anyway. This’ll do.” I locked the chain around her neck, with only a little slack, preventing her from even sitting up. “And don’t bitch. You made the decision, and you have to live with the consequences,” I said. She nodded sadly.

Over the next week, once her crisis had passed, Crystal slowly returned to her ‘old’ self. That is, drinking beer, getting high, and smoking in front of the tv most of the day and crashing hard at night. She wasn’t as morose as she had been, either. Her revelations of her fear about changing, though it came as a result of an escape attempt, heartened me. It proved that my plan was working on her. Not just physically, but mentally as well. I was pleased.
The next couple of weeks, I urged her to let herself enjoy pleasure more. I made her use the original Crystal’s old plastic vibrator to get herself off in front of me. Needless to say, she was extremely reluctant at first, but by the end of the day, full of beer and pot, her resistance was not what it used to be. The first time it took the better part of an hour before her body overrid her shyness and shame. It made me so hot, watching this trashed young thing slide the vibrator in and out of her while playing with her sore nipple rings. I made her do it every night, then later, during the day, when she wasn’t so wasted. She was getting used to making herself come with somebody watching her, and that was good.
She had taken to smoking Camel Wides marvelously well. I supposed non-menthol agreed with her. I coaxed her into dangling it from her lips more (especially while masturbating.) She looked so cute with it hanging from her mouth and bouncing when she talked.
A couple of weeks after her escapade, I didn’t replace her used patches before bedtime. She was so drunk she didn’t notice. The following morning, she irritably slumped into the kitchen chair and cracked open her first beer with which to down some ibuprofen. Her first cigarette of the day disappeared quickly, and she chained into a second, to my satisfaction. I don’t think she even realized she was doing it.
She went through three before slowing down to her normal pace. All throughout the day, she dragged much harder and more often than before. It registered on her that she wasn’t wearing the patches that day. She asked me why.
“I don’t think you need them anymore,” I told her.
She studied the cigarette in her fingers. “They were nicotine patches, weren’t they?”
“Yes.”
She nodded solemnly as though I’d confirmed deep, philosophical truth. She didn’t say anything more, but was glum for a while. At least she didn’t start crying. She didn’t slow down her smoking, either.

That evening I roused her. “Take a shower and shave yourself. You feel like a cactus. And do something with your eyebrows. They’re bushy. Be quick.” While she was in the bathroom, I sorted through the clothes, looking for something that would fit her decently. I found a blue tube top and a short, black faux-leather skirt. Not a great match, but it would do for her. Shoes were going to be a problem. Her feet were a little narrower than the original Crystal’s. I found some chunky heels that I thought might fit.
When she came out of the shower I gave her the old makeup bag, telling her I wanted her to look hot. I tried to do something with her hair while she was applying it. She whined about the makeup’s poor quality and ugly colors the entire time. I checked when she claimed she was finished and I was unsatisfied. I had to layer on more blush, lipstick, and eyeshadow until she appeared properly slutty. I directed her to a mirror.
“Gross, I look like a skank!”
“You look lovely. Memorize your face. That’s what I want to see, at the very least, whenever I tell you to put on makeup from now on,” I said. “Get dressed.”
“Why, what’s going on?” she asked as she struggled into the clothes.
“You’ll see.” She looked fabulous. Her newly-softened belly swelled over the waist of the skirt and fat bulged out beneath her armpits where the tank top dug in. Not too chubby, but she was definitely no lean cheerleader. Her nipple rings were clearly outlined beneath the stretchy fabric. The shoes fit her well enough after she tightened the straps as far as they would go. I spritzed her with cheap perfume that smelled like flowers mixed with moonshine. Perfect.
I got my things and started out the door. “Come on.” I looked back after a few steps. She was frozen by the doorway. “Well?”
“Go.. out? Me too?”
“No, I want you stand there like a dipshit ‘til I get back. Of course you too.”
Instant anxiety attack. “But I can’t go out looking like this. Look at me! My hair, these rings, my makeup, my clothes! I can’t be seen like this, I can’t, I just can’t.” I was forced to grab her wrist and drag her down the steps. “I’m fat! I’m faaat!” she cried while stumbling towards my van.
“Would you relax? We’re not going anywhere fancy. We only have one stop, in fact. Get in,” I said, pushing her into the passenger’s seat. I thought it funny that a girl who was kidnapped would suddenly find it so difficult to go back into public. Her vanity had overwhelmed any of the thoughts of escape chances that should normally have been the first thing in her mind. I climbed in after her. Before starting the car, I leaned close to her. “Do I need to threaten you?”
“Huh? Wha?”
“I know I was forgiving over your bedpost escapade. But don’t think I will hesitate to destroy you and your sister if you fuck with me in public. Got it? Do I need to go into details of what I will do to you?”
“No, please don’t. I won’t do anything, I swear.” Her head was bowed.
“Good. See that you don’t. I’ll be watching you like a hawk.” That said, I pulled out onto the highway.
Crystal stared out the window. She probably wanted to see stars, but it was cloudy. There wasn’t much else to see out here. There were no streetlights out here in the middle of nowhere, it was all blackness and trees. She looked like she was experiencing a mixture of terror and excitement. This was the first time out of the tiny trailer in over a month. She had no idea where she was going, or who would see her.
We drove until we entered the outskirts of the nearest town, which was small to begin with. There were trailer parks and shoddy homes dotting the road between fields and forests. Gas station/bait shops, bars, and strip joints were clustered here; this area bordered on the county that the actual town was in. The town’s county was dry, but the county on this side was not. People from all around the area congregated here to get drunk and buy their booze to take back to their dry town. In fact, it was illegal to carry more than a six-pack of beer beyond the county line.
I steered into a little strip of businesses a distance from the road. There was a bail bondsman, a liquor store (the nearest one, where I purchased vodka and cigarettes in bulk for Crystal), a barber shop, and a tattoo parlor. I parked and urged her out of the van. “Where are we going?” she asked, worried.
“You have an appointment. Let’s not be late,” I said, leading her to the tattoo parlor. I did indeed have an appointment for her. I already picked out what she was going to have done. Now, if she could just keep herself from fucking things up. I had to pull her bodily through the door. She stood, bathed in fluorescent light, looking more garish than ever and gazing around with wide eyes. There was a counter and a wall displaying pages of work of varying size and quality. A scruffy, bald, bearded man with a potbelly parted the curtain hiding the back room and came out front. “Can I help you ladies?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “An appointment for Crystal Chambers. I was told the templates should be ready.”
“Ah. Jus’ sec.” He shuffled through some things behind the counter. “Here it is. Yeah, I remember now. So who’s the one getting inked? I’m guessin’, from the way you’re looking about to piss herself, it’s you,” he said, looking at Crystal. She looked like a deer in headlights and her lower lip was quivering.
“Yes,” I said, taking Crystal’s upper arm and pulling her forward. “She’s just nervous. She’s never had one before. She’s been so excited about it, until today came, now she’s frightened. She still wants it, though. Don’t you?” She stared at me like I was speaking another language.
“You sure you want all this done tonight? It’s a lot of work, especially for a first-timer,” he stated.
“Yes, we agreed it would be for the best. Besides, she has the money for it all now. No telling if she’ll still have it if we stretch it all out.”
The man looked her over. “Well,” he said, “I think I’m gonna have to see some kinda ID. I wouldn’t used to, you know, but the way things are these days..” He waved his hand as if to sum it all up, then passed it over his shiny scalp.
“Of course.” I smiled and gave him her new ID. He squinted at it, looked at her again, then shrugged.
“Alright,” he said. “Certainly not the youngest-lookin’ twenty-two year old I’ve worked on, that’s a fact. But she’ll still have to sign the waiver.” He placed a clipboard on the counter.
I prodded Crystal and gave her the pen. In a daze, she blinked at the paper and started to write her name. Her old name. I bumped her arm, making her scrawl a line across the paper. Leaning to her ear I whispered emphatically, “Don’t forget yourself, Crystal.” She blinked again, and carefully wrote the correct name over the half of her old name. She halted at her last name, trying to remember, then finally wrote Chambers. I shook my head.
The man studied the mangled signature and shrugged once more. “C’mon back.” I followed him, holding Crystal against me. She started bouncing up and down and clutched at my shoulder. “Please,” she said under her breath, “don’t do this to me. I can’t. Please! I’ll do anything you want, please, no.”
“Anything? I think this counts under anything.”
“Anything but this, please, tattoos don’t come off, they don’t come off!”
“No, they don’t,” I said. The man’s back disappeared behind the curtain, hiding us from view. I took a handful of her hair and yanked her head back. “Now listen,” I hissed in her ear. “You’re going to do this. You don’t have to like it. But you’re going to do what I say. And you’re not going to tell him to stop, no matter how bad it hurts. Got it?” She nodded, squirming in pain.
The back room was furnished mostly with some chairs and a padded table. There was a skinny, hawk-nosed man in the back working with some inks. The bald man addressed Crystal. “Name’s Bear, this is Pete. I think with the both of us working, we can get you fixed up tonight.”
Pete looked up and noticed Crystal’s piercings. “Hey, you’re just fulla holes, aincha? Did I do those? I don’t remember doing those.” Crystal glanced at me, then gave him a quick shake of her head. “Well, only one other place in town what does ‘em. Does ‘em any good, that is.” I knew that. It was the other place where I had learned to do piercings myself. The men had a brief discussion about what they’d do first. They decided on sitting her down and propping her right leg up, so they could do her arm and ankle at the same time. I told her to take off her shoes. She did so and sat down, her face a mask of fear.
After preparing her skin, they went to work. Bear did her upper left arm, Pete worked on her right ankle. She immediately started whimpering and crying from the pain. They had to tell her to stop squirming countless times. She couldn’t see her shoulder, but she watched with horror as the black ink was imbedded in the skin of her ankle. I shook my head at her, to remind her of my warning. Her free leg was curled up under the bottom of the chair and her knuckles where white, gripping onto the chair arms. I had to restrain myself from thrusting my hand down the front of my pants and fingering myself at the sight. I didn’t want this night to be anymore unusual for the men than it already was. “Are they often this loud?” I asked.
Bear chuckled and shook his head, wiping Crystal’s skin. “Had to soundproof the walls some time back. Barber shop was complainin‘. Screams were bad for their business, for some reason.”
It took some time, but they both eventually finished. The arm was finished first. He handed Crystal a mirror to get a good look at it. Written across her arm, in graceful but bold script, was the name Crystal. Crystal looked shocked, the reality of it sinking in. Her new name was written on her body forever, for everyone, especially herself, to see. She might have said something stupid, but the pain in her ankle quickly distracted her from her arm. “She loves it,” I provided for her, “It’s absolutely perfect.”
Pete cleaned up her ankle when he was done. It was a link of thick chain that wrapped around her leg. On the outside of her ankle, the ends of the chain clasped a bluish, cut diamond. It was the best graphic representation of the name Crystal I could think of. The chain matched up with where I used to lock her to the bed. She turned her leg this way and that to get a good look at it. She had started crying. The men thought it was from the pain, teasing her in a friendly way, but I knew better. They wrapped up the fresh tattoos. “Alright, let’s get the rest done,” Bear announced. Her head shot up.
“Go on, Crystal, take your clothes off. They can’t do what you wanted with them on,” I said. She looked like she was about to run screaming, but I held her with my eyes. “Come on, Theresa is waiting.”
“Don’t be embarrassed, girl,” said Pete. “I seen so many nekkid bodies here, they hardly do a thing for me anymore. Er, in other situations, that is.”
She slumped, defeated, and pulled the tube top over her head. Her slowly-growing breasts fell out, rings quivering in her hard nipples. “Skirt, too.” She stood and reluctantly unzipped it and tugged it down her thighs.
“Don’t worry, you can leave your undies on. Won’t be doing anything down there,” said Bear. I almost laughed. I thought being naked might be less embarrassing for her; I forgot she was wearing an unattractive, old pair of nylon briefs, the crotch slightly yellowed from years of the former-Crystal’s old piss. I helped her onto the table and bid her to lie down on her back.
Bear went to work on her the slope of her left breast. Pete, after pulling the waistband of her underwear down a few inches, started on around her navel. At least she was free to pound her fists and legs against the surface of the table this time. “Oh my chest, my boob, my fucking tit!” she wailed. Her mascara, already smeared down her cheeks, was now running down the sides of her face to her ears. I stood at the top of the table and stroked her forehead.
After a while, a shocked and cried-out Crystal found herself with an elaborate, Mehndi-style design in a circle around her belly button. Sitting on her breast, a few inches above her nipple, was a red, black-widow-shaped spider, as seen from above. Its spindly legs spread out onto her chest and breast. Neither had any particular meaning, I just thought they would look good on her. “Don’t you just love them? Aren’t they just like you wanted?” I urged. She nodded numbly. I wondered if she was even seeing them.
“Okay, roll over. Last one. You ready?”
She looked up at me. “No more,” she gasped. “Please no more.”
“It’s a small one, don’t worry. Be done in a flash.” She sobbed and tenderly rolled over, burying her face in her arms.
Before long her muffled cries rang out through the small room as Bear worked on the small of her back. I had fibbed a little. It wasn’t that small a piece. I watched as row of thorns, narrow at the edges and thickening toward her spine, grew along her waistline. In the center, a punctured, bleeding heart appeared. It was about seven inches across in total. She barely gave it a glance in the mirror when it was done. She looked as though I’d just given her the worst beating in her life, but without the bruises. She was shaking too much to get dressed on her own, so I helped her. I had to be careful to arrange her clothes so they wouldn’t irritate the tattoos too much.
“Whew,” said Bear. “That was a fair piece of work. Rushed a bit, but I’m pretty satisfied.”
“So’s she,” I said. “I just need to get her home and let her drink it off.” He laughed and nodded. She leaned against me as I led her out front.
“Hope ya’ll come back soon,” he said as I paid him in cash with a hefty tip.
“Oh, I’m sure we will,” I said.

It was very late by the time we stepped out of the tattoo parlor. I went to the liquor store and got Crystal a beer. I figured she was probably thirsty. She accepted it wordlessly. She didn’t say a thing on the way back to the trailer. All she did was squirm awkwardly, trying to find a way to sit that didn’t hurt.
She finally spoke when we got back to her trailer. She was standing disconsolately in the living room and smoking with trembling fingers. She was fingering the bandage that was taped over her arm. “I’m ruined. My body is ruined.”
“Oh stop that. You look hot. Well, once you heal, you will. You’re hardly ruined.” Not yet, anyway. “I admit, you’ll probably never be able to make the cheerleading squad again, but that’s no big loss.”
She had been gazing at the floor. Now she looked up at me with big, wet eyes and her shoulders started to quiver. In a moment she was bawling hysterically.
“Oh for god’s sake, stop that. Hey,” I said, turning her around and making her look at me, “you know what? I’m really proud of you.”
“B-but I didn’t d-do anything,” she said, sniffling.
“You did what I told you to do. And you stayed put. I bet you never went through anything like that before?” I grinned.
“It hurt like f-fuck.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think you even knew some of those words you were yelling,” I said. A smile started to form at her quivering lips, but it quickly disappeared. “I think you’ll feel better after you sleep.”
“I’ll never get to sleep. I hurt too much.”
“I’ll give you some sleeping pills. Come on.”
I gently pulled off her clothes and got her stiff body onto the bed. I took a few percocets from a plastic baggie and gave them to her. “What are these?” she asked.
“Just some sleeping pills. Don’t worry, it’s all natural stuff.” I watched as swallowed them with the last of the beer before locking the chain around her neck. “I don’t think I need to point out the symbology of the chain around your ankle now. Now you’ll always remember your place, even when you aren’t tied up.”
“Yeah. I got it,” she grunted.

A little later I went to check on her. She had gotten the sheet wrapped snugly all around her body. She looked at me with heavy-lidded eyes and smiled a little. “How you doing?” I asked.
“Look, I’m a big burrito,” she said dreamily, her system full of beer and tranquilizers.
“Yep, you sure are.”
“I’m a big, cozy burrito,” she insisted. I shook my head and left her alone.

She had to wear loose clothes while she was healing up. Her new tattoos looked wonderful on her. There wasn’t much left of the old Connie visible. Not that she would notice, being as sedated as she was. Crystal discovered she liked the fuzzy feeling the pills gave her, so I allowed her some throughout each day.
I would let her go outside some, but only while closely supervised. At some point she ceased to care about the filthiness of the lime green couch in the yard, and I had to help her move it around back close to the trailer so she’d have a place to sit and smoke. Given more space, I made her try to go through some more cheerleading routines. This time, instead of crying, she just giggled helplessly. I so wished I had her old cheerleading outfit for her to squeeze into. That would have looked perfect. She gave up after trying to do backwards handstand. All she did was throw her hands in the air and fall flat on her chubby ass. She seemed a little dispirited after that, but only until she got into her next beer.
I sat her down to dye her hair again. This time it came out a little more platinum and a little less bright yellow. She didn’t bitch at all. I think she may have actually enjoyed it, the way she primped in the mirror afterwards when she didn’t think I was looking.
She wasn’t doped up and giggly all the time. She would still have periods of depression. But the moods were changing from being miserable and feeling sorry for herself to being angry and feeling sorry for herself. In place of crying, she would have little violent fits that I found endearing. She would curse and yell and kick things. Although it was me she was most likely angry at, she never directed it at me. Instead, she would rage at her surroundings and at life in general.
“None of this should be happening to me,” she said to me during one of her fits. “I didn’t do anything to deserve this! It’s not fair! It should be someone else.”
“I suppose it’s not fair. But who else should it be, if not you?”
“I don’t know. How should I know? Just not me!”
“I think you do belong here.”
“Why? Why do I? I don’t! I.. it’s.. I don’t!” She threw an empty beer can against the wall then commenced to hit a throw pillow until her anger was spent. Exhausted, she collapsed on the sofa, eyes glazed. In a small voice she asked, “Can I have another sleeping pill? Please?”
“No, not ‘til later. Not until you eat something. You know how they can make you sick on an empty stomach.”
“Yes, mommy,” she muttered and fumbled with the bong. It wasn’t too long before she had eyes closed and her hand in the waistband of her panties. I found it funny that the more angry and trapped she felt, the less I was inclined to hit her.
Later that day I discovered something interesting. Her sister’s photo, the one that was taped to the wall, had been torn in half, then carefully taped back together. I didn’t know when Crystal had done this, or why. I didn’t ask her.

It was couple of weeks later that I decided it was time to introduce Crystal to society. She easily filled out most of old Crystal’s clothes by now, so picking out an outfit was no problem. I selected a red spandex miniskirt and black stretchy top. They showed every dimpled curve of her degraded cheerleader figure. The back and waist tattoos showed nicely, and half of the spider peeked out of the low cut top. This time I had her wear a thong. She dutifully made herself up the way I liked, worried the whole time.
“I don’t want anymore tattoos,” she whined. “They hurt.”
“I already told you, we’re just going out,” I said. She let me decorate her arms and fingers with old Crystal’s cheap jewelry. “A picture of beauty you are.”
“Am not,” she sulked.
“And if you’re really good, I’ll get you something nice. How would you like a cd player? You could listen to music again.” If I did, it was going to be with her own money. Crystal Chambers was now a proud recipient of welfare. I hadn’t yet told her and would continue to control her money even if I decided to let her know. She would never have more than a few bucks of her own in her pocket at any time, if I had any say.
“Really? You mean it? You’re not just saying that?”
“Yep. But only if you’re good. Go get the pipe. I want you nice and loaded before we go.”
“Okay!”

She got all upset when we approached the area of the tattoo parlor, but relaxed some when we passed it. Instead, I stopped at a nasty, hole-in-the-wall bar. I had been there before. While not officially a biker bar, its patronage was less than reputable. I led her into the dimly lit and noisy building. There was no carding at a place like this.
I proceeded to the bar with a frightened Crystal nearly burrowing into my back. I had to detach her from me to get her onto a barstool. She hunched over and started to rest her arms on the bar, only to flinch away from some mystery puddles.
The place wasn’t very crowded. There was a group of scummy men in the corner, near the entrance to a little room with a pool table, some couples (the fairer half of most of the couples almost certainly a prostitute), and a scattering of people drinking alone. I wasn’t uncomfortable here. I had spent much of my youth in places like this. I got Crystal to drink shots of vodka until she loosened up, then gave her some more.
It wasn’t long before the spokesman of the scummy men, little more than a greasy, walking leer, approached us. “Want some company?” he asked.
“I’m good. But my friend here is looking for some fun. She was talking ‘bout you guys,” I told him. Crystal’s head drunkenly rotated toward me.
“Oh yeah?” he said.
“Yeah.” I addressed Crystal, “Why don’t you go and grace the men with your charming self?”
She looked confused. The man urged her off the barstool. “Yeah, sweetie, come on. We’ll take good care of you. My buddies can’t wait to meet you.” She was unsteady on her feet, but he was only too willing to let her lean against him. She craned her neck to look at me, still looking like she didn’t know quite what was going on, until the group closed around their prey and she vanished from view.
I turned away and nursed my drink, letting them all get good and acquainted. The last time I checked, they had her surrounded in the corner, talking into her ears, and holding full glasses to her lips. She seemed at first overwhelmed, then started giggling. I assumed she was responding well to their compliments. Her self esteem was so low by now, she was practically glowing from any positive comment.
An attractive woman with mousy hair and wearing riding leathers came up to me. “Saw y’all come in. Is she yours?”
“I suppose you could say that.”
She smirked. “Kinda thought so. Mind if I join you?”
We spoke for a while. Turned out her name was Tawny, she was in her thirties, and we had a fair amount in common. My allusions that Crystal was new to this, to everything, intrigued her. At one point she directed my attention to the girl. Crystal was clearly trashed and was holding her top up, smiling. The men were enjoying free feels of plump breast. It wasn’t long before they coaxed her into the pool room, hidden from general view. I smiled.
After I took scope of the woman’s personality, I asked her for a favor. She eagerly agreed. She was a woman after my own heart. She slid off the stool and relocated to the back door of the bar. A short time later, Crystal emerged from the pool room, looking dazed. There were wet spots soaking into her top and skirt, perhaps cum, perhaps spilled drinks. She gazed around the room, looking for me. Before she could spot me, Tawny came up and spoke to her. Crystal, disoriented, let the woman lead her through the back door into the alley behind the building.
I finished my drink, ordered a bottled water, and filled my purse with little, square bar napkins. The men, joking among themselves, filtered out of the pool room and got more drinks. Maybe ten minutes later, Tawny came through the front door and winked at me. She looked satisfied. I grinned, ordered a drink for her, and left the bar.
The alley behind the bar was filled with weeds and piles of garbage bags full of bar trash. The ground glittered with years’ worth of shattered bottles. Huddled against some of the bags was Crystal’s rumpled form. She was crying. When I touched her, she flinched and curled up tighter.
“There, there, it’s just me. I’ve been looking for you. What happened to you?” I had to pull her hands away from her face. She’d taken quite a beating. Her bottom lip was split and her left eye was swelling shut. What’s more, her face and neck was glistening with blood that was spilling from a long cut on her face. “Aw, poor thing, what happened to you?”
She blubbered incoherently. I took the napkins from my purse. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” I said. I poured some of the water over her face and dabbed up the blood. The cut started near her left ear and curved into the hollow of her cheek. It wasn’t very deep, a simple carving into her plump cheek, but it bled quite a bit. I smiled to myself, thinking it would leave a lovely little scar. “Come on, can you ge-”
Crystal pulled away and vomited noisily into the weeds. I stood upwind of her and let her empty her stomach. When she was done I gathered up her shuddering, whimpering body and got her to her feet. I helped her back the van. “You okay?”
“A.. lady,” she finally slurred. “Dunno. Made me.. lick pussy. She hitted me! Had a knife. Muh.. my face hurts. Is it bad? Is it bad?” She saw the blood on herself for the first time and nearly fainted.
“There, now, relax. It’s just a tiny little cut. Face wounds bleed a lot, even when they’re not bad. Just hold these napkins to it. We’ll get home and get you some sleeping pills and you’ll feel so much better.”
She clutched the napkins to her cheek. “Why? Why’d she.. do that to me?”
“I don’t know,” I said abstractedly, helping her into my car. “Some people are just like that, I guess.”
Crystal was quiet on the way back, just sobbing a little. When we were almost home, she looked tearfully at me. “Can I still have a cd player?”

The resilient Crystal rapidly recovered from her assault. She didn’t even remember much of what had occurred that night, but the thick scab on her face was a constant reminder of the assault. It was the source of many self-pitying and violent fits over the next week. On the good side, it seemed to finally drive home to her percocet-insulated mind that her body was changed- ‘ruined,’ as she called it -irredeemably. I figured that was an important hurdle. Once she stopped caring about maintaining her pristine cheerleaderness, she would be able to participate in, and enjoy, her debasement that much more.
I soon took her back to the bar. She was terrified of another attack, which was exactly why I needed to. I needed to get her over her fear of such places. The first time, there was no one there particularly interested in her. All she did on that occasion was make a drunken fool of herself, nearly falling on her way to the restroom, and puking on the toilet seat. To be courteous, I made her clean the seat off with her bare hands, which only made her puke again. That time she aimed better. I had to laugh, she was just so easy to manipulate when she was that trashed.
The second occasion, the group of men was back. They seemed to be Friday regulars, and they were very pleased to see her. Crystal’s scabs and dark bruises around her eye didn’t dissuade them in the least. Crystal didn’t even recognize them, but got much friendlier with a belly full of booze. I watched her this time with delight. My Crystal kneeled on the sticky floor and gave blowjobs to four of them. Actually, she was so wasted it was more like oral masturbation than a blowjob. Her eyes were nearly rolled back in her skull, her jaw hung open, and a string of come dribbled from her chin. The contrast with how she used to be was breathtaking. I toyed with the fantasy of taking a picture of her like that and sending it to all her former friends and family, just for fun. But that would have been foolish.
Also during this period, I left Crystal chained up and alone at night several times so I could go out and visit Tawny. We got along famously. She smelled of leather and sweat and musky perfume. I proudly showed her pictures I had taken of Crystal during her debasement and she loved them. I told her about how much better Crystal had gotten at eating pussy since the time she first gagged into my crotch. Then I demonstrated my own skills on her.

Crystal paid another trip to the tattoo parlor. I told her in advance, so she could get the crying out of the way and not embarrass me. She begged me to tell her what they were going to do this time, but I wanted it to be a surprise. Bear and Pete were only too happy to spend another profitable evening damaging her body.
“What the hell happened to you?” Bear asked, seeing Crystal’s face. She quickly bowed her head and tugged at the short hair in front of her ear. After the injury, she had developed the habit of pulling her hair down in attempt to cover at least some of the scar. I had to give her another trim, to shorten it enough to keep her from hiding it.
“Oh, she pissed off some guy’s girlfriend in a bar,” I provided for her.
“Damn. Duck next time,” he said.
I had brow-beaten her beforehand enough that she didn’t need to be threatened into getting into the chair topless. It was a long, painful session for the poor thing. After only a few minutes her heavy eyeliner had begun to run down her cheeks. While she was whimpering and crying, I selected a nice little bit of jewelry for her out front. I heard her cry out when she noticed I wasn’t in the room. “Where is she? Ow! Where’d you go? Don’t leave me!” I hurried into the back room. She looked tearfully relieved that I was there.
Wow, I thought, she needs me. It wasn’t that much of a surprise, really. I had been her only company, both her tormentor and friend, for months when she was more unstable and frightened than she’d ever been in her life. I was her only constant while her body, mind, and world was changing drastically. The thought gave me a frission of pleasure. I knew then that she wouldn’t be running away any time soon.
When the tattooing was done, Crystal found herself with a fine spiderweb wrapped over her breast for the spider to sit on. Her nipple was a pierced, pink circle in the middle of dark webs. On her upper right arm there was a naked, buxom devil girl stretched lewdly across her skin. She was grinning lasciviously and spreading her pussy to the world with her fingers. When Crystal saw it, her first reaction was, “Aw, fuck.” Which was exactly what I did to her as soon as we got home.

The next day I had her tied spreadeagle to her bed. Stretching her arm out like that was clearly uncomfortable for her. I teased and toyed with her pussy until her clit swelled and she was moaning. I lifted her head, giving her a few percosets to swallow. “Three? In the middle of the day?” she asked.
“Trust me. You’ll want them to kick in as soon as possible in a few minutes,” I said, fetching my piercing tools.
“Why? What are you going to do?” She saw the kit. “Oh, no, not again! Please, there’s nothing left to pierce!”
“There’s tons left to pierce on you. But right now, I’m only going to do one. Look,” I said, showing her the jewelry I got while she was getting tattooed. It was a short, thick barbell with smooth, clear crystal balls on each end. “Isn’t it pretty?”
“Where’s it going?” she demanded, not appreciating its simple beauty. I parted her pussy and opened the forceps. “No, not down there. Not there, I’ll do anything!” She writhed on the bed, trying to free herself from the ropes.
She just about screamed in horror as I spread back the hood of her clit and clamped it tightly on its base. Oddly enough, she didn’t scream as I forced the thick needle through the tough, sensitive flesh. She only made a breathless hhhuuuhhh sound that dissolved into tears. She did yelp a little when I followed it through with the thick barbell and screwed the end on. I’m sure it must have hurt horribly. When I was through, she had pretty crystal balls holding back the hood and exposing her clit while pinching it snugly from both sides.
“I know that was bad,” I told her, “but you’ll thank me for it later. You’ll get so much pleasure from this.”
She shook her head weakly. I covered her up as she was shivering from shock, but didn’t untie her. It wasn’t long before the painkiller took effect and she fitfully passed out.

Crystal was sitting on the sofa, legs splayed, poking at the bar in her tender clit. She was wearing a tight, sleeveless shirt and her panties were bunched around her ankles. “It’ll really feel good?”
“For the hundredth time, yes,” I said. I was getting some things together to leave.
“But it still hurts,” she pouted.
“Yeah, it’ll do that. Okay.” I stuck the pills in my purse so she wouldn’t accidentally OD while I was away. “I’m going to go out for a while, to my place.”
Crystal sighed, pulled up her panties, and trudged toward the bedroom to get locked up. “No,” I said. “I’m not going to chain you up anymore when I’m gone. Unless you think you deserve it. Or maybe enjoy it.”
She looked startled, even a bit frightened. “What? Why? What’s going on?”
“I just don’t think I need to. I can trust you not to run away. Can’t I, Crystal-clit?” I had been teasing her with that nickname lately.
“Well, yeah, but-” She suddenly looked worried. “You’re coming back, aren’t you? You’re not leaving me here, are you?”
“Of course I’m coming back. You think I’d put so much work into your little ass and leave?”
She fidget, seeming at a loss. “Well, when are you coming back?”
“Don’t know. Sometime tonight, probably.”
“What are you, like, gonna do?”
“I’m going on a date.”
“A date?” She looked surprised. “With who?”
“No one you know. I’ve gotta go,” I said, starting to leave.
“What do you need a date for? I’m right here. Like, I thought.. we were..” she faltered.
My god, I thought, the silly bitch is jealous. “We were what? Lovers? Monogamous life-partners, is that it?” I laughed. Her face turned red. I went down the cinderblock steps to my car.
“Go on then! Have a good time. Go on your date!” she shouted from the doorway, her fat boobs jiggling in her tube top. “I won’t wait up. Maybe I won’t even be here!”
At that, I stopped and turned around. She shied back into the trailer. “I’ll be here, I’ll be here,” she simpered.

I had a great time with Tawny. It was such a relief to have someone to talk to other than that sedated slut of mine. Later that night, I confessed to her about what I had done: taking the innocent Connie from her safe and sheltered home and turned her into the trashy tramp Crystal, and why I did. I didn’t use the word ‘kidnap,’ I left it vague as to whether she had come by force or I had lured her away. It didn’t seem to matter. Tawny loved each dirty little detail. What a great woman.
Around midnight I returned to the trailer. I discovered Crystal had waited up, after all. She was sitting on the sofa, her eyes were red from pot or crying, maybe both. She stood quickly when I came in and was about to say something, then heard footsteps following me up the steps. She looked frightened and tried to pull her little shirt down to conceal her panties. “Crystal, meet Tawny.”
Her eyes went wide when she saw Tawny. “You? You!” Her surprise turned to anger. She darted around the coffee table, scattering empty beer cans, and launched herself at Tawny. I stepped away, startled. Crystal beat ineffectually at Tawny, her bright hair a blur. The taller, older woman was grinning, having little difficulty keeping the girl at bay.
Finally, she got Crystal’s arm twisted behind her back and forced her onto the floor, knocking the air out of her. She sat on the girl’s back, pinning her free arm under her. Tawny looked happy. “Friendly, ain’t she?”
I knelt down so I could look in Crystal’s red face mashed against the rug. “What’s wrong with you? Your very first houseguest and you pounce on her?”
“Her.. she..” Crystal gasped, “she’s the one.. the one..”
“Yes?”
“She cut me! It was her! Ow!” She tried to wriggle free.
Tawny feigned surprise. “Who, me?” I helped her roll Crystal over. “I cut you? What’s she mean?”
“Someone sliced up her face a while back in an alley,” I explained with good humor.
“It was her! She did it!” Crystal spit and squirmed.
Tawny traced a finger down the bright red scar on the girl’s cheek. “Why would I do that? Why would I want to hurt such a pretty face?” Crystal tried to bite her finger.
“Come on, Crystal, stop that,” I said. “How can you be so sure it was her? You were so wasted that night, it could have been anyone, and you know it.”
“Yeah, but.. I’m sure..” Suddenly she didn’t look so sure. “Her jacket.”
“Thousands of people have jackets like that around here. Is that your only evidence? You know what I think,” I said, slyly, “I think you’re just jealous.” That made Tawny laugh.
“Am not!” Crystal protested. She looked thoroughly confused.
“I think you are. You’re just trying to be territorial. That’s cute, but boring. Am I going to have to punish you? If we let you up, do you think you can control yourself?” I asked. She sniffed and nodded. Tawny let her up. Crystal stood, primly straightening her stained shirt, and turned away in a huff.

Tawny and I drank and talked and laughed in the kitchen. Crystal was scrunched up in the shadows in the far corner of the sofa, smoking feverishly and glowering. Finally, I called to her, “Don’t you feel left out over there? Get over here, entertain your guest. Don’t be rude.” She whined something and slumped into the kitchen. “Come on, show her your new jewelry. I know you’re proud of it.”
“Oh yeah, I heard all about that. Let’s see,” said Tawny.
Crystal hung her head, fretting with the bottom of her shirt. Eventually she pulled down her panties and showed off her clit. Tawny teased her about it, and gave it a tug. “Quiddit,” Crystal yelped and pulled away.
I took the vodka bottle from the cabinet and put it in her hands. “Drink,” I said. She fidgeted and was about to argue. She saw my expression and quickly tipped the bottle to her lips. She didn’t drink very much, so I took the bottom of the bottle and raised it higher, pushing the mouth of the bottle past her teeth. I put my other hand on the back of her head to hold her still. She flailed and pawed at my arms, but didn’t try to get away. Air bubbles rose through the vodka as she swallowed desperately. It spilled from her mouth and ran down her neck. I let go when she coughed spastically, spraying a mist of vodka across the kitchen. She doubled over, coughing and gasping for air. Tawny was rubbing herself, turned on by the display. I took a handful of Crystal’s hair and gave her another helping of vodka before I finally let her slide down onto the linoleum. “That’s better.”
In a matter of minutes, she was much more willing to show off her pussy. She even gave us a show using her vibrator, flat on her back on the floor. I noticed she was avoiding her clit, so I took the vibrator from her and held it to the barbell. She screeched and arched her back. “Don’! Too much! I cand’t!” I kept at it until she was half out of her mind with sensations. Tawny and I took her to the bed and fucked the giggling, moaning thing until she passed out. Then we fucked each other.

Crystal’s soaps had just ended. She smoked a cigarette while playing with her pussy. After the night with Tawny, she had become much more interested in her clit. I doubt she remembered much about it, but she did remember the pleasure. I didn’t think she completely believed Tawny was innocent of carving her face, but her doubts were enough to keep her silent about it. Maybe someday I’d tell her the truth about it, but maybe not.
Speaking of the truth, I thought maybe it was time for some on another matter. I sat on the wooden chair across from the sofa. “Crystal, I have something to confess to you,” I said. She closed her legs and looked at me with fuzzy curiosity. “I don’t have your sister. Nobody does.”
She blinked. “Huh?”
“Theresa. She’s still back home, safe and sound. She was never kidnapped.”
Her brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“Are you deaf? No one has her. It was a bluff. I said it to keep you in check.”
Crystal frowned, as if puzzling over some difficult riddle. “You mean she’s, like, okay? She’s home? All this time?”
“Yep. Still in her soft bed, going to malls, talking about boys,” I waved my hand, “whatever it is they do.”
“But.. how can that be? How?” She stood up and paced towards the kitchen, then spun around. “That’s not fair! Not fair! How come she gets to be home and I have to be here?” She stalked over to the photo of Theresa taped to the wall. Her fingers curled like she wanted to claw it to pieces. She pointed at the photo. “I stayed here so she’d be safe, and she always was? I could have left at any time?”
“Well, no. I still would have chased you down. But she wouldn’t have suffered anything.”
“But I’ve been suffering, instead. Look at what me! Look at what I’ve become, for her! She did this to me. I’ve been ruined, all for her! And she’s not in danger?” she growled, crumpling up the photo and throwing it against the counter. It bounced off and rolled onto the carpet. “This is all her fault!” She ran to the sofa and fell onto it, face down. She started crying into the cushions. “All her fault.. her fault..”

I let the knowledge soak in for a while. When she had stopped crying and was staring blankly at the wall through a veil of smoke, I asked her, “You want to get back at her?”
Her eyes roved across the room and settled on me. “How?”
“Well, I figured since you’re pretty well set up here, I’ll be spending more time away. You know, doing my own thing. But you’d get pretty lonely sitting here all the time. It was just a thought, you know, that you might want company-”
“Yes,” she said dully, her fingers clutching the cushion.
“Yes to what?”
“Bring Theresa here. Yes,” she said with more vehemence. She straightened up a little, breathing hard.
I made a show of considering it. “I don’t know. It could be difficult. She may not want to stay.”
“I’ll make her stay. I’ll make her go through everything I’ve been through. She won’t leave,” she said, with complete seriousness.
I laughed inwardly. I’m sure there was some part of her that was horrified at what she was saying, relieved that her sister was never in danger. But that part of her, like the rest of Connie, was almost gone. “Well, I’d be pleased to make you happy. But like I said, it’d be difficult. I’ll have to think about it.”

Some weeks passed. After Crystal’s initial reaction to my revelation, life had gotten back to ‘normal.’ She hadn’t asked me about whether or not I had decided to bring Theresa there. It was probably guilt that kept her from asking. On the other hand, she didn’t change her mind and tell me not to.
Perhaps it was to stifle the guilt, or perhaps she had finally settled into her new life, but either way, she dove with reckless abandon into drinking and drugging. Each time we went to the bar, she would need to drink less and less to be ready to give herself up as a cum receptacle. And even after all this time, she still wouldn’t drink the water. Almost all of her fluids came in the form of alcohol, and all her air was tainted with smoke.
At the same time, my relationship grew with Tawny. She doted over me and indulged me like a mother. She and I had been discussing her moving into my place. I enjoyed the thought of it. I didn’t tell Crystal, though. She would’ve just gotten jealous.

I finally informed Crystal, while she played with her new, second-hand cd player (I found it and a stack of cd’s at a garage sale for seven dollars), that she was on welfare. The amount I told her that she was getting was considerably less than the actual amount. The surplus I kept to myself. I’d end up spending it, and more, on her anyway, but I wanted control over what she purchased. “It’s all yours to spend each month,” I said. “What do you think you want to spend it on?”
She looked thoughtful, sucking the lip ring into her mouth and nibbling on it, as was her new habit. “Can I get cable?”
I coughed. “Cable?” Not new clothes. Not nicer furniture, or something else to better her surroundings. Instead, something she could spend more time sitting on her ass and watching while she snacked and got high.
“Yeah. All I get is four stations. It’s boring.”
“Hm. Well, they don’t do cable this far out of town, but I bet you could get one of those satellite things. Why not?” I said. That made her happy.

It was great fun watching her squeeze into her new cheerleader outfit. I got it at a uniform store in town on a whim. It was her old size, so it fit her perfectly awful. Her fat bulged over the small waistband of the skirt, making her belly tattoo fold outwards, and her plump, tattooed arms swelled out of the sleeveless top. Her somewhat-larger breasts were mashed against the font, giving her spider-webbed cleavage that peeked out of the top. She had a hell of a time trying to get the zippers closed with the new inch-long nails she had to wear all the time now.
She did a clumsy, stumbling routine using baggy throw pillows as pom-poms. I laughed my ass off, and so did she. She was flying on pills and pot. She looked positively obscene. If the girl had looked like that during cheerleader tryouts a year ago, she would have been laughed out of the place, and probably suspended. Her plump hips made the short, pleated skirt even shorter, exposing large areas of jiggling white thigh. I made a mental note to think of a design to decorate her thighs with.

That evening, as I was getting ready to go to my place, Crystal came up to me, fidgeting. She had changed into a tube top and spandex capris. I examined her, almost startled by her appearance for some reason. Then it occurred to me; she fit in. With her fried, messy hair, her trashy clothes, the Camel held in her slut-nailed fingers resting on her hip, even the dark rings of over-indulgence under her eyes, she looked like she’d lived here all her life. There wasn’t any Connie left to be seen. I smiled.
“Can I come, too?” she asked.
“Come where?”
“To your house. I wanna see it.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. My house was nice. She would never step foot in it, or in any dwelling nicer than the one she was in now, if I could help it. “You have this place, you don’t need to be anywhere else.”
“But it’s ugly,” she said, growing truculent. “You don’t know what it’s like, having to live here all the time.”
I stopped packing. What she said made me angry. “I don’t? What would you know about it? You don’t know anything about me.”
“You don’t-”
“I do, as a matter of fact. I grew up in a trailer like this. Maybe a little bigger, it had another room at the end. But it looked a lot like this. They all look the same. You think you have it bad here?” I asked her. She was discomfited and didn’t answer. I continued. “From the day I was born until I was older than you, your real age, I lived in a shit hole like this. And my parents weren’t worth shit. You grew up in a safe, happy, two-story home in the suburbs. I grew up getting beaten and fucked. And not just by them, by anyone. They couldn’t have cared less. Hell, I looked a lot like you do now. But I got lucky, and was able to pull myself out and hose myself off. They’re dead now and I became successful, and there you have it.” I looked out the window, dragging on my cigarette. I didn’t know why I was telling her all this now.
Crystal tilted her fake-blonde head. “That’s what it’s all about? You hated your life and you’re taking revenge on me because my.. my life wasn’t bad?”
I seized her arms and pulled her close. “I don’t hate it. I miss it. I liked it. And I’m making you like it, too.”
She wriggled in my grasp. “But the stuff about me growing up different! It is revenge. But why me? What’d I do? Just because you had a shitty past, you want me to have a shitty future?”
I smirked and let her go. “You belong here just as much as me. I remember my shitty past with.. clarity. Every dirty thing. But you, with your fortunate beginnings, probably can’t remember much. What’s your earliest memory?” I knew I shouldn’t be saying these things now, but it just came bubbling up. I couldn’t stop myself.
She looked distinctly uncomfortable and very sober. “I dunno.”
“Go on, try.”
“I don’t know! Maybe a birthday party. When I was five.”
My smirk became a sinister leer. “A birthday party. That’s so sweet. And nothing before then?”
“No.”
“Well, I suppose I can’t blame you.” I paused, exhaling smoke through my nose. “You have a scar under your arm, right near your armpit. Where’d that come from?”
Her fingers touched near the area I was referring to, a nearly-circular, little white pucker under her left arm. “It’s always been there.”
“Do you remember getting it?”
“No, I was too young. I got it at a neighborhood barbeque. I was a baby, and a spark from the grill landed on me when I got too close. My parents told me.”
“Your parents didn’t give a shit about you,” I said. “I gave you that scar.”
She took a few steps back. “You did not. That was years ago. I was a baby! What are you talking about?”
I looked at the ceiling, thoughtful. “I’m not really sure why I did it. Maybe it was just frustration. Having to change your diapers and feed you and get up to settle you when you cried in the middle of the night. I was only eight then, and I practically had to raise you on my own. One time I guess you just pissed me off, crying all the time like you did. I took one of your mother’s cigarettes and stabbed it out in your fat little baby skin. It gave me my first orgasm. Or at least, a child’s version of one. Sure didn’t shut you up any, though. Damn, you were loud.”
Crystal was shaking all over. “You’re making that up. Why are you saying this?” She bumped against the coffee table and sat down on it heavily, knocking beer cans onto the floor. “You didn’t know me. Why are you saying that?”
“Just explaining why you belong here. Dear. Little. Sister.”
“What? You’re not my sister! You can’t be!”
“Oh, yes. You were two, and Theresa was just born. Our parents, your real parents, gave you both up for adoption. They said it was my fault they were sending you away, because of the cigarette thing. They always blamed me for everything. They said it was to keep you safe from me, but the truth was, you were just a burden. I know, it’s not easy to hear. But they couldn’t care less when I burned you. They just got rid of the two of you so they’d have more money to spend on drugs. I wanted to go with you, but they kept me. I guess I was just too good a fuck to let go.”
Crystal was clutching her hair. “Stop it! Stop it! I don’t believe you, you’re lying, just like about Theresa!”
I went through my purse and took out a photograph. It was old and worn from having always carried it with me. I offered it to Crystal, but she wouldn’t take it. She seemed afraid of what it could show her. Eventually, curiosity got the best of her and she looked.
There, sitting on a rumpled blanket on the floor, surrounded by trash and useless hoarded items like old magazines and newspapers, were three children. The oldest was me, cold-eyed, grinning perfunctorily into the camera. A topless, dirt-smudged toddler was reaching her arm affectionately over my shoulders and gazing at me, in that adoring way that babies do. She had pale brown hair and a healing burn mark under her arm, right where Crystal’s scar was. She was smiling in the picture, but looking as if she had been recently crying. A baby, bundled up so that only her cheeks and a pudgy pink hand were visible, was lying on the floor in front us.
“The picture was taken shortly before you were given away and we were separated. I have others,” I said, “but this one is my favorite.”
“No. No.” She stood up and headed for the bedroom, then turned around towards the sofa, the stopped completely. She looked lost. “It can’t be. You can’t be my sister.”
“It’s true. I didn’t just pick you out at random. I tracked you down through the system. It wasn’t hard. I know it’s a lot to absorb, but it’s the absolute truth. And now, we’re back together.”
She looked at me tearfully. “But we can’t be sisters. We’ve had.. had..”
“Sex? There’s nothing wrong with that. Not here, not in this place. It felt good, didn’t it? We have the perfect relationship. Now you see how silly it is for you to be jealous? No one can ever be closer than we are. No one can really come between us. We’ll get to be together forever.”
Crystal groped her way to the sofa, as if blind. She buried her face in her hands, sobbing. Looks like I won’t be going out tonight, after all, I thought. I pocketed some pills and sat down beside her. “It’s not a bad thing. You have someone who’s never forgotten about you, never stopped thinking about you. And now you’ll be taken care of and looked after. In my own way.”
She made a shrugging motion. I urged her closer to me. She resist at first, then collapsed against me and started bawling into my armpit. When the worst had passed, I coaxed her face into the open and pressed the pills into her lips. She tightened her lips, then relaxed and let my fingers into her mouth. She swallowed and pushed her face against me once more.
“Why do you want me this way? If you’re my sister, why do you want me to be like this?” she asked, her voice muffled against my breast.
“It’s what you were meant to be. And it turns me on,” I said. “You know it’s right, because it turns you on, too. Admit it.”
She sniffed. “I-I guess so.” I knew she wouldn’t have even bothered thinking it was possible when she had first arrived. But now, broken down and fucked up as she was, it was an easy thing for her to believe. All she had to do was believe she was somewhat happy, for now. With a little more time, she truly would be. I was sure of it.
In a short while the pills took effect and she gradually became limp. Her head rolled back, her eyes half-open. “Say you need your sister,” I told her.
“Need.. my sister,” she mumbled.
“Tell me how yummy your big sister’s cunt is.”
“It’s yummy.”
I ran my tongue along the scar on her cheek. “Say you love being slutty trailer trash.”
“Love.. it,” she said weakly.
I kissed her. “That’s right.” Yes. Perfect.

The girl slumped on the floor of the filthy little trailer she had just been brought to. She was exhausted from struggling. The woman named Tawny who had kept her in her basement for a couple of days took her leave after delivering her. She didn’t know anything about Tawny, who never spoke to her and only checked on her to give her food and water and to see if the circulation hadn’t been cut off in her bound hands. At the moment, her wrists were tied behind her back and her ankles were hobbled.
She focused on the lumpy, stained, yellow-brown carpet, her hair hanging down around her face, afraid to look around. The place stank of cigarette smoke and the yeasty odor of beer. “A little worse for wear, but she looks okay,” came a woman’s voice. Involuntarily, her head jerked up. The woman who spoke had dark hair, appeared younger than Tawny, and fixed her with a cool gaze.
Another woman, this one with a scar on her cheek and grinning cruelly, stood beside her. She was the scarier of the two. She had nearly white-blonde, ragged hair, a plump body squeezed into a miniskirt and an overflowing little bustier, her skin decorated with piercings and tattoos. The largest visible tattoo was a dark serpent that wrapped itself up the full length of her left thigh, its head disappearing under the skirt. A tattooed collar of thorns encircled her neck. The look in her eyes suggested she was intoxicated. “Have a nice trip, Theresa?” the scarred one asked. The girl just cringed.
“Oh, she so innocent. So clean. I don’t believe she recognizes you,” said the woman.
“C’mon, Theresa, didn’t you miss me? Or did you forget me that fast?” the blonde girl asked.
Through the fog of fear and shock, a glimmer of recognition sparked in Theresa. She gasped. “C-Connie! Connie.. where.. how? Help me,” she pleaded. She shuffled on her knees towards her sister. “Connie-”
She received a hard slap to her face that knocked her onto her side. An empty beer can crumpled painfully under her hip. Laboring for air, she started to cry. Her sister heaved her back onto her knees. “That’s not my name anymore. It’s Crystal.” She pointed to the name tattooed on her shoulder. “See?”
“Con.. Crys..huh?” Theresa struggled to think. “What’s happened to you?”
“Don’t you like it?” Crystal asked, suddenly dripping with sweetness. She did a slow pirouette to show herself off. “I did it all for you.”
Theresa sobbed, her cheek stinging. She didn’t understand anything. She looked from the stranger her sister had become to the dark-haired woman who watched with amusement, her arms folded. She thought that this woman must somehow be responsible. Seeing the look of accusation Theresa gave her, the woman said to Connie, “I bet she tried to replace you. She probably became a cheerleader, too.”
“I bet she did. Is that what you did, you little shit?” Crystal hissed, drawing close. Her breath smelled like the trailer: cigarettes and booze.
Theresa quailed. “Nooo. Connie, what’s-”
“I told you, I’m not Connie! Come here,” she said, flopping Theresa’s slender body onto her back. The ropes dug painfully into her wrists. Crystal straddled Theresa’s chest. The miniskirt rode up and Theresa could clearly see that her sister wasn’t wearing any panties and her crotch was shaved. The head of the snake tattoo was positioned outside her pussy, it’s forked tongue flicking her vulva. “I’m sorry. Am I being too rough? Poor baby sister. I know what you’re going through. And soon, you’ll know what I’ve been going through, too. Right?” This last she directed at the woman, who nodded pleasantly.
“I wanna go home,” Theresa cried in small voice.
“But you are home. And I’m home. We’re all home!” She giggled drunkenly, sounding a little crazed. She started scooting her way up Theresa’s chest. “I’ve been waiting for this.”
Crystal arranged herself over Theresa’s face. Theresa saw in uncomprehending horror that there was a piece of metal with stones stuck through her sister’s clit. “Con-!” she managed before her face was smothered. She screamed and gagged through a facefull of her sibling’s tattooed, wet, unwashed pussy.
“She can’t lick worth a damn,” Crystal complained.
“Neither could you. But she will,” said the woman. Theresa watched her tease Crystal’s frizzy hair affectionately. “Give her time. I waited years for us all to be a family again, just like it was supposed to be.” She looked down at Theresa’s damp, reddened face. “Bet she’ll be thirsty when you’re done. I’ll just go fetch her a beer,” she said.
Crystal laughed.